[ATTENDED: May 10, 2018] My Brightest Diamond
I only knew about My Brightest Diamond because Shara Worden sang on The Decemberists’ Hazard of Love album. She sings some pretty intense stuff on it, so I looked her up. Well, it turns out that Shara has changed her name to Shara Nova. But nothing has changed about her voice.
She is dramatic and operatic with amazing power.
I didn’t really know much about the band’s music, so when the lights went down and Aaron Steel sat at the drumkit, I waited for the rest of the band to show up on stage.
Then some synths started and I heard Shara singing. But she wasn’t on stage. I was still trying to figure out how close I wanted to get to the stage (experimenting with how close you had to be before the voice started getting lost) when I turned around and there she was singing in the middle of the floor.
The audience had created a large circle around her (This link has three photos from the balcony where you can see the circle better) as she sang and danced. She came up very close to me–I was essentially the edge of the circle–her long hair hit me in the face as she danced around singing.
Then she ran up on stage and sang “teach me on the dancefloor” (I think).
She has a new EP out and a new album coming out and I gather most of these songs were new.
Nova was amusing and enchanting. She told stories, she bantered with the audience–looking intensely at everybody in the first few “rows.”
She played keyboard and guitar, she taught us a part to sing along on her song “Champagne.”
I had assumed her music was a bit more dramatic to go along with her voice, but most of the nights’s songs were very dancey, with some moody pieces thrown in.
Before the set ended, she played an acoustic version of “I Have Never Loved Someone,” a song written for her son.
The set ended with “White Noise.”
She played an impressive set. I’ve seen a lot of duos like this lately, and she was really enjoyable.
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