The Bowery Presents

The Bowery Ballroom upcoming shows

My Brightest Diamond

Basia Bulat

Venue:
The Bowery Ballroom
Date:
Fri 1/22
Notes:
18+
Doors: 8:30 PM / Show: 8:30 PM
$15 advance / $17 day of show
Tickets
My Brightest Diamond
official website
myspace
My Brightest Diamond is spearheaded by Shara Worden, granddaughter of an Epiphone-playing traveling evangelist, fathered by a National Accordion Champion, and mothered by a classical organist. Having a family of musical wanderers who migrated across the US every few years, the landscape and the musical influences were constantly changing. Spanish tangos, Sunday morning gospel, classical and jazz were the accompaniment to her home life. Her first song was recorded at age three and by age eight she was studying piano and performing in community musical productions.

Picking up an opera degree at the University of North Texas, Shara immersed herself in the songs of Purcell and Debussy. After college, she moved to New York City to simultaneously continue her opera studies and pursue her songwriting ambitions, releasing two albums with her band Awry. Shara began studying composition with Australian composer Padma Newsome (of Clogs / The National). After the breakup of Awry, Shara assembled a coterie of musicians to accompany her with bass and drums, strings, wine glasses, and wind chimes and thus the sound of My Brightest Diamond was formed.

A few years later, Shara met Sufjan Stevens at The Medicine Show, a variety show hosted by New York City's incendiary poet, Sage and man-about-town Joe Porn, at Arlene's Grocery. This, in turn, led to a sabbatical from her work with the Diamond, and she began doing splits and round-offs (not to mention the human pyramid) as one of the notorious Illinoisemakers.

In August of 2006 My Brightest Diamond released their first record, Bring Me The Workhorse, on Asthmatic Kitty Records to critical acclaim. The crepuscular album featured songs which distill stories to their most distressing points of contact: a phone call, an injured horse, a dragonfly caught in a spider's web. Shara’s Manicini-esque string arrangements laced with dramatic guitars and punk rock drums defined the Diamond sound. Her infatuation with theater and costumes inspired her to wear superhero capes, ball gowns, or Tudor corsets on stage, depending on her mood. Months of international touring commenced, leading Diamond to share the stage with artists such as Sufjan Stevens, The Decemberists, The National, St. Vincent, Devotchka, Tim Fite, Rasputina and more.

In 2008 Diamond released their sophomore album, A Thousand Shark’s Teeth, originally meant to be a more classical, string quartet affair, the work slowly evolved and refined itself over a period of six years. Influenced by artists such as Tricky, French composer Maurice Ravel and Tom Waits, in addition to the star exploration themes of Anslem Kiefer's paintings, the imaginary landscapes of photographer Robert ParkeHarrison, films by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and Alice in Wonderland, A Thousand Shark’s Teeth is a musical snowglobe that sparkles each time you touch it. The songs, whose themes broach intimacy, kisses by moonlight, laundry, lost friendship and more, marry vast instrumentation – marimbas, harps, clarinets, French horns, rabid guitars, vibraphones to name a few – to create an unequaled amalgamation of style and color.

2009 finds Diamond in remix land again with beautiful EPs being crafted by Alfred Brown, Son Lux, Roberto Lange and (forthcoming) DM Stith. Shara joins The Decemberists on their new release The Hazards of Love in the role of the wicked fairy tree mother queen and will be touring with them throughout the year.
Basia Bulat
official website
myspace
"I don't think I realised the radio had more than one station til I was 11 or 12," Basia Bulat says. At the family home in Toronto, the dial was always fixed to the local oldies station: Motown, Stax, The Beatles, Beach Boys and Sam Cooke. While her mother hunted for someone to do the dishes, Basia and her younger brother Bobby would hide with a radio or tape player, happily rattled by all that song.

Since the age of three, Basia has been sitting on piano stools and trying to hammer things out. It started with her piano-teacher mum, but along the way Basia's picked up guitar, autoharp, banjo, ukelele, sax and flute. In high-school her instrument was the upright bass a lone girl among "eight-foot-tall guys, goofing off with the tubas". There's a sense of play that still suffuses her music, jostling under the songs of regret and love, want and joy. When her brother began in his teens to play drums with punk bands, Basia would be there with her demerara voice, joining happily in the jam. When she left for university in London, Ontario, musicians began to drop by her downtown apartment. Many nights were spent with these classically-trained friends, laughing and singing, and together they made a glad, bright noise.

For the summer of 2006, Basia went to live in Montreal. Through friends she met Howard Bilerman, an engineer and co-owner of the famed Hotel 2 Tango studio. Basia cashed some student loans to record with Bilerman in one of the final sessions at the original H2T site, but by the third day she had lost her voice. It was ultimately these rough early takes, hoarse with excitement, that formed the bulk of Oh My Darling. Initially the recordings were meant only as an "audible memory" of the time Basia spent with friends in London and Montreal: "We liked playing together so much, and I just wanted to remember that." But Bilerman was smitten with the songs, with Basia and her band, and he began to write to friends at labels, friends with music-blogs, anyone who might pay attention. For despite the original intention, these tracks are breathless, thirsty, dislodged from dreary nostalgia. There are strings, yes, and acoustic guitar, but also a frantic drum-kit gallop; the influence of the spirits of wild Jeff Magnum, big-voiced Odetta, Emily Dickinson and all those boisterous soul-music singles. It's this spark that sets Basia Bulat apart from the raft of typical singer-songwriters, and also what attracted the interest of Geoff Travis and Britain's legendary Rough Trade label who released Oh My Darling in Europe and Japan in the spring of 2007.

Since then Basia and her band have toured central Canada and Europe, sharing stages with the likes of the Great Lake Swimmers, Julie Doiron, Sondre Lerche, and The Veils, leaving a trail of new fans and happy critics along the way. In mid-2007 a Canadian deal was inked with Hayden's Hardwood Records, preceding a Western Canada tour with Final Fantasy this fall. Oh, My Darling is a pet project no longer, but Basia's ambitions are unchanged from those early days of that tiny apartment: "I love songs that I can sing along to," Basia says, and then she corrects herself, balling her hand into a fist. "No, songs that you want to sing along to."

by Sean Michaels
American Express — Are you a card member?

© 2010