On September 16th, singer-songwriter Shara Worden, aka My Brightest Diamond, will release her latest album, This Is My Hand, via Asthmatic Kitty. The follow-up to 2011’s All Things Will Unwind is said to represent a “back-to-basics” approach, which she adopted shortly after working on River of Fundament, a “six-hour long cine-opera” which featured the music of marching bands.
“In the States, the marching band is still alive in most public schools, so it represented to me inclusive music making, something anyone can learn,” Worden explained in a press statement. “That’s the definition of folk music to me, music made by the people. I loved the communal quality, the way drums and horns travel in large three-dimensional spaces.”
According to Worden, this revelation helped inspire the LP’’s larger context: “The genesis of the new album was looking at the changes that have happened in music over my career, and trying to reevaluate what [music] meant to me in the first place. What is the value of music?” She added, “I had this ‘back-to-basics’ moment of reading how humans were making sounds before we were using words. The album started with these fundamental ideas of music’s function. I just made a list: clap, singing along, and so on . . . ways in which people can simply join in with music.”
In anticipation of the new LP, Worden’s let loose “Lover/Killer”, an airy pop number that couples her signature coo with bold and strutting brass arrangements. Listen in below.
For more, check out “Pressure” and Worden’s recently released EP, None More Than You, a precursor of sorts to This Is My Hand.
This Is My Hand Tracklist:
01. Pressure
02. Before the Words
03. This Is My Hand
04. Lover Killer
05. I am not the Bad Guy
06. Looking at the Sun
07. Shape
08. So Easy
09. Resonance
10. Apparition
