Chris Walker Vs. My Brightest Diamond: A Thousand Shark’s Teeth Interview

Several months ago I separated the music blog-styled posts from the Versus and it was a good decision. There are always exceptions, though, and today is one of them. One of my favorite artists, Shara Worden, perhaps better known as My Brightest Diamond, is releasing a new album next month: the brilliant A Thousand Shark’s Teeth. Shara was nice enough to talk with me about the forthcoming album, the plight of an artist in today’s musical climate, and what the future holds for My Brightest Diamond.

Chris Walker Versus: So, it’s been a while. A Thousand Shark’s Teeth is finally here, or it will be on June 17. Would it be accurate to say this album is much darker than Bring Me The Workhorse?

Shara Worden: Dark is such a relative thing…I always feel like a fluff cake next to Tool or Portishead or [Nine Inch Nails] or Jesus and Mary Chain. I think I might be a pansy or a pink fairy. As for Shark’s Teeth, I do think the colors of the marimbas, bassoons and bass clarinets are darker sounds, but the lyrics feel much lighter and more playful to me than Workhorse.

CWV: Maybe ‘intimate’ is a better word to use.

S. Worden: Yeah for me, it is generally more intimate. The nighttime atmosphere is a good one. Interesting creatures come out at night. It’s good for brooding. Maybe I need to leave the comforts of my dark velvet curtained apartment in Brooklyn and go to the summertime vibe of the west coast so I can write in major keys.

CWV: I was amazed to hear you used a Tricky sample on the new track, “Like A Sieve.” How’d that come about?

S. Worden: Massive Attack is so bad ass and I also really like a lot of Tricky’s solo stuff. He has a tune called “I Be The Prophet” off of his solo record [Nearly] God and there is this amazing string sample that is so bizarre and irregular. So, for a long time I played around with my impression of that lick and wrote “Like A Sieve” based off that riff but finally I broke down and wrote Tricky a letter and said, “Hey dude. You rock. Can I please use your exact phrasing in my tune? I’ll love you forever…” and he said yes, so at the end of the tune we recorded that lick and it makes me happy every time it comes around.

CWV: So you recreated the sample instead of just, well, sampling it; that’s really cool. I know some songs from Shark’s originated in the Workhorse sessions, will any b-sides or song ideas from the Shark’s session make their way onto the next album?

S. Worden: Nope. I wanna start with a clean slate. I like using singles as a way of sneaking out older material or misfit songs, so some of them will be released that way. The songs from Shark’s Teeth span six years of writing and I thought at many times that I should just let the past lay where it fell and move on, but I had put so, so, so, many hours and a great amount of thought and energy into these songs and their arrangements that I felt I needed to honor that work. But now that it’s done I am so excited to leave off old ideas and begin with the present.

CWV: Addressing the album’s title, I was pleasantly surprised to find the one we’d all come to know it by really ended up being the final title. What does the idea, or the theme, of “a thousand shark’s teeth” mean to you?

S. Worden: Ha! Me too. It was picked rather arbitrarily four years ago, but like a kid growing into it’s clothes or something, it seemed to fit the final result, so we kept it. The title comes from the song “Goodbye Forever” that is talking about the things that prevent us from giving and receiving love and if, say, one could be free of the blockages, then one could hear the singing of the stars more vividly, feel the light of the sun, like the warmth of love, prickling all over your skin, like a thousand tiny shark teeth.

CWV: The musical climate has changed quite a bit over the last couple years, what, with bands giving away entire albums for free, and album sales dropping in record numbers…unless you’re Mariah Carey. What are your thoughts on the way music is obtained now? And how would you say it affects My Brightest Diamond?

S. Worden: Yeah, it’s an awkward subject. I think no one wants to hear an artist complain about it because people want the freedom, and frankly so do I. I mean, I downloaded Portishead’s record before it was out and was ecstatic. I am very hypocritical because I have a lot of illegal music but I also still buy a lot of music. Shark’s has been “leaked” and, of course, I am thrilled that people are excited about it. On the other hand it kinda puts a pain in my chest ’cause I survive as an indie artist completely off of album sales and I feel really strongly that concert ticket prices should be as low as possible and I don’t want to make music to try and be in car commercials. There is really nothing else that I have to offer people to buy than what I have recorded. I guess I need to make a perfume line? At the end of the day, I have to keep making art whatever the situation and whatever life doles out to me, I have to accept that. I mean, global warming and the situations in Iraq and Africa are far more concerning than downloading.

CWV: No, no car commercials please. I agree that global warming, and subjects like international affairs are far greater concerns than downloading on the grand scale of things, but music – how it is obtained, digested, and changing in our digital age – is still important because it’s something that affects us every day on a personal level. It has influence. People bond over music, it shape lives and identities (for better or worse). It’s important to ask questions like, and you don’t necessarily have to answer these: with the ease of downloading do albums, as a long player listening experience, still matter? Will kids today be moved by albums the same day you and I were, or our parents were? How does downloading affect the quality of music? How do consumers view artists and how do artists view consumers? And this is going off on a tangent but I often wonder if we’re reverting back to the Fifties when everything was single driven: you heard it on the radio, it was pressed to vinyl, and sold with a b-side. The end.

S. Worden: Dude, you are preaching to the choir here. Amen brother, amen!

CWV: Thanks. There’s just an optimistic part of me that thinks people still care about albums and supporting quality artists. I mean, I downloaded Shark’s when I found out it had been leaked, but I’ve also pre-ordered it on vinyl and CD. And I’d like to think I’m not alone; people know that purchasing albums by their favorite artists is vital to the longevity of this thing we all love. And, at the risk of sounding like a gushing school girl, I think people need an album like Shark’s, especially in the indie world where lately it seems like anything female fronted is garbage. She & Him? Forget it. And Scarlett Johansson has an album? Give me a break; I might steal that but I’ll never buy it. I think your band, your albums, are reminders that art is still alive in music, and if enough people realize that they’ll shell out the $11/$12 to own a physical copy. Or at least support you by buying it off iTunes, digitally.

S. Worden: Thanks for the love, Chris. I appreciate it. I, of course, am with you on the love of the album, the art of album making. But no matter what happens in popular culture, I think there will always be an underground of album lovers. As an artist, of course you want people to like what you do and support you, so that you can make more more more music the way you want to and have your life stuff: rent, bills etc. taken care of, so that you don’t have to have the day job. I don’t know where things will end up for me. I think the balancing act is working that line between dreaming big and working within your resources and at a certain point, it is out of the artist’s control. One foot in front of the other. One day at a time. Cue a Dolly Parton song here or something.

CWV: On a lighter note, the bonus EP that comes with the pre-order on Asthmatic Kitty sounds cool. Do those demos date back to the Workhorse sessions, or are they newer? Older?

S. Worden: We first started recording for Shark’s in September of 2004, (predating Workhorse) and then I added a lot of other instruments on to those initial string quartet recordings so that’s what’s reflected in these demos. They are kind of the final moment before they “hit the trash can” and I started over. In some cases, like for “Pluto’s Moon” I abandoned the string quartet direction and took a very different approach for the album. To me, showing the demos is a way of kind of revealing the skeleton, the process of the album and also a way of honoring the people that have helped me along the way, but weren’t ultimately represented on the final recording.

CWV: You’re going on a brief tour before and after Shark’s hits store shelves, will their be a larger tour to follow or is that it for this year?

S. Worden: Yes, yes! Tour, tour, play, play, play! We will be doing string quartet tours in the fall.

CWV: Good to hear. So, have you come across any Chateau l’affite 1984 lately?

S. Worden: No, these days it seems like it’s only bottles of wine from 2006.

CWV: So sad. Well, it’s been a pleasure, as always. Anything you’d like to say before we conclude?

S. Worden: Hip hip hooray! And a toast to you!

A Thousand Shark’s Teeth, in stores June 17, is available for pre-order in both LP and CD format (with bonus EP) at Asthmatic Kitty. Be sure to catch My Brightest Diamond on tour. Remaining show dates (before Fall):

06.09.08 Other Music (Instore), New York, NY
06.14.08 Hultsfred Festival, Hultsfred, Sweden
06.17.08 Blender Theatre at Gramercy, NYC, NY
06.20.08 Berklee Performance Center, Boston, MA
06.27.08 Le Rock dans tous ses Etats, Evreux, France

Pre-order A Thousand Shark’s Teeth.

My Brightest Diamond [Official] [MySpace]

Posted: May 28th, 2008 | Author: Chris Walker | Filed under: My Brightest Diamond | No Comments »