Blige, The National, and many others, engineered and mixed the song in New York City. Pat Dillett, producer and engineer for David Bryne, Laurie Anderson, They Might be Giants, Mary J.
Like the entirety of All Things Will Unwind, “Be Brave” features celebrated New York City chamber ensemble yMusic. This was the context in which I started writing.
3, the lament of a mother who has lost her son in war. “In November,” says Worden, “the great composer Gorecki died and I remember that weekend clearly, listening to the work and reading the lyrics in his beautiful Symphony No. But it’s also an inner dialogue, Shara to Shara, a blistering plea/lecture/pep talk to get her gameface on and do something tangible and real about injustice - including singing and dancing. It is her rain dance, her attempt to influence and change things seemingly outside her control. “Be Brave,” the first video from My Brightest Diamond’s third and forthcoming album All Things Will Unwind, is frontwoman Shara Worden’s response to a world unwinding. Alarming increases in human trafficking and sexual slavery. The house arrest of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo. Mostly, though, Worden's drive- to be so many things, to harness and perfect so many disparate sounds- makes her work feel more distant than it should.The impending demise of the Adélie penguins. All Things Will Unwind's theatrical bent can read as goofy, if not wholly inscrutable (the slow-but-punchy "There's a Rat" feels cartoonish, while "High Low Middle" feels showy, staged). The carefulness of All Things Will Unwind can feel impenetrable sometimes, and while her closest musical analogue is the equally ambitious Joanna Newsom, Worden lacks Newsom's oddball vulnerability- it's the difference between performance and possession, and while there's certainly room for both, the former comes, always, with the risk of affectation.
MY BRIGHTEST DIAMOND BE BRAVE CRACK
Although Worden's vocal performances are varied and borderline virtuosic, it's easy to find yourself wishing for her voice to crack or crumple or fail, to be fallible in a way that's just as beautiful. "Be brave, dear one/ Be changed, be undone," she coaxes, and like "We Added It Up", the song proffers a tiny, passing glimpse of insecurity.
The excellent "Be Brave" opens quietly, with muted drums and Worden's low growls: "I'm feeling scared and I am overwhelmed," she sings. It's a pleasantly hazy refrain Worden's best moments come when she's at her darkest and most uncertain. "Love binds the world," Worden and her backing vocalists chant, but it's still hard to know (with good reason) whether those particular shackles are supposed to be a comfort or a curse. Worden sings about circumstantial incompatibility- "If I was love/ Then you were shhh"- with convincing fervor, before the track transforms into a quasi-reassuring mantra. Strummed opener "We Added It Up" is punctuated by various strings and toots it unfolds like a Rube Goldberg contraption, all call and response. Already well known for her collaborations with chamber-oriented musicians ( Sufjan Stevens, the National), Worden is now backed by the contemporary ensemble yMusic, who add plenty of playful bits to her oft-ethereal, shifting folk songs.
0 kommentar(er)
