Shara Worden is most recognizable as one of the cheerleader girls rounding out the latest incarnation of Sufjan Stevens’ touring band, but her own group, My Brightest Diamond, has a completely different kind of orchestral pop thing going on. MBD feeds off dark, gothic imagery and has a vaguely Eastern European sound — think Regina Spektor’s minor key ballads — and needless to say, it sounds nothing whatsoever like Stevens. Despite the careful orchestration (Worden has long studied composition, and is working on another album with just a string quartet), her staggering voice is front and center. She can do the high-pitched Kate Bush melisma, the deep-voiced PJ Harvey dig, and every so often, Spektor’s range-jumping, quasi-operatic belt. The difference with Worden is that she never falls back on being cute, which, though this is kind of sad in itself, is probably what you might expect from a single female singer hailing from the sidelines of one of the cutest, most gimmicky artists we know.
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