Shara Worden, the central instrument of My Brighest Diamond, embodies confidence; her every note and step is poised with a sure knowledge of self. For the sold-out crowd who filled Remis Auditorium at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, it was an evening of aesthetic intimacy that offered orange balloons, punk breakdowns, and lots and lots of segued stories.
The night started with a 20-minute program of short animations from students at Mass College of Art, and the film theme continued when Worden scampered on stage clad in straw hat and black suiting. It’s an outfit far from the peacock brilliance that illustrates her recent album All Things Will Unwind, but the costuming was homage to Buster Keaton, whose silent film, Balloonatic, served as backdrop for a score Worden first premiered at last month’s New York Guitar Festival. Silhouetted at a piano bench, Worden’s guitar lines and vocals gave voice to the fanciful love story and punctuated slapstick moments in the film. As a story that revels in dreams and things impossible, it set the stage for her subsequent songs.
Worden lead off with the brooding intensity of “Golden Star,” before introducing new songs. While many know Warden from this straightforward, PJ Harvey-tinged, guitar on her first two albums, the set list varied from vaudevillian social commentary (“High, Low, Middle”) to hushed ballads (“She Does not Brave the War”). Between songs Worden offered stories of her 99-year-old grandmother whose Kansas gumption prevented her from seeing 100, and children’s birthday party conversations that inspired a whimsical hot air balloon quest (“Everything is in Line”).
On album, and often on stage, My Brightest Diamond sees Worden as spritely bandleader to classical ensembles; for this staging, it was just Shara on guitar/piano/wrist bells/ukulele/thumb piano/autoharp and Brian Wolfe on drums. The duo offered a strong collaboration; their banter showed two musicians who enjoy sharing songs. After an extended down tuning between songs, Wolfe hammed, “permission to rock?” and Worden gave her unreserved permission.
What might have devolved into a night of artsy cabaret, fitting for the concert setting and Worden’s mingling of baroque phrasing and Prince cover songs, instead formed an illustration of sanctification. The unifying trope for this transformative process was a mask designed by Lake Simons, which Worden donned throughout the night with movements akin to Chinese theater. When the mask was removed at the start of “Be Brave,” Worden chastised this false face to “be changed or be undone” and eventually discarded the plaster shell for an exultant cry: “I’ll be brave.” Change is not easy, the song’s narrator reminds “sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-shara this is going to hurt,” but it is worth everything. On this night, the closing chorus of “We Added it Up” approximated Worden’s heavenly vision as the audience joined voice to sing, “love binds the world.”
There is a beauty in watching My Brightest Diamond, a beauty of watching Shara Worden discard pretension in favor of multifaceted styles to transport an auditorium into a realm where magic really happens.
