Shara Worden with yMusic at MusicNOW

Shara Worden and yMusic

For those of you who like a bit of snarkiness in your gig reviews, I’m sorry, but you’re likely to be disappointed by this one. I’ve been lost in thought over this particular set for nearly two months now. I couldn’t even speak about it for a week after, and even then, I was barely coherent.

 

For someone who hasn’t released an album of her own in three years, Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond) has been remarkably busy, performing all over the world with everyone from Clogs to the Decemberists, and making guest appearances on just about every album released in the last 18 months (Penelope, anyone?). Somehow, in there, she even managed to spend an hour talking to me, which is a remarkable feat for anyone. Then there’s the matter of the album’s-worth of material she’s written in that time, which is what concerns us here.

When a friend with connections to MusicNOW told me in March that I had to get down to Cincinnati for the festival, if only to hear Shara’s new stuff, I didn’t exactly put up much of a fight. I’ve been hearing second hand accounts of it for a while and everyone seemed to be in agreement that it was really something, but, in retrospect, nothing they could have told me could ever have prepared me for the real thing. Because something has happened here – something big – but I just can’t quite put my finger on it.

Maybe it’s her teaming up with yMusic. I’ve been witness to a number of incredible performances in the last few months and, more often than not, yMusic (or members thereof) have been involved. Whether they’re backing Owen Pallett or playing their own rep, there is just something revelatory about the way they play – a sort of purposefulness that is all too rare. (It’s worth noting here that Shara Worden and yMusic violinist Rob Moose have recently collaborated on a multimedia/poetry album, Letters to Distant Cities, for New Amsterdam Records, which I have reviewed for another publication.)

That could be it. Yes, I know that we all love the way My Brightest Diamond can turn it up and blow the roof off a club, but this was different. Here was power derived through intricacy – a fabric so finely woven it’s hardly noticeable until it’s swept your feet out from under you and carried you away. On only one occasion, I managed momentarily to tear my gaze from the stage and scan the room. And in that moment, I witnessed something I have never seen before: an entire audience transfixed – jaws scraping the floor and people pulling at their hair in rapt amazement – hundreds awash in power and intimacy, under a blanket of music and dance, punctuated by squeals of a baby in the back at the sound of his mother onstage.

So maybe it was he who threw that switch, because in those final moments – a lullaby – the great sweeping wind that left bodies slumped in their chairs under the sheer power of it all came to rest a gentle breeze that stole our breath and drew tears from more than one witness. (Even now, it’s difficult to think back on it without becoming choked up.)

I’ve spent a great deal of time on this blog talking about reconciling pop and classical music. I discussed it with Shara a couple of years ago, and have done with several other artists since then (some of which I haven’t even published here yet). But I’m starting to think that maybe reconciliation isn’t what we’re looking for here. “Reconciliation” still seems to imply, at least to some extent, pandering to what one (or both) side(s) think of the other. But what we really want – I think – is a complete dismantling of all previously-formed opinions. And I’m pretty sure that’s what I’ve just seen. And the fact that this same material can be performed at Lincoln Center one month and in front of a theaterful of Midwestern indie rock kids the next speaks volumes about the music – and that both audiences can find it equally ravishing and devastating gives me a little hope for humanity.