Album Review: A Thousand Shark's Teeth by My Brightest Diamond

It's not surprising that My Brightest Diamond's second album was originally intended to be a string quartet-based work, or that it was six years in the making. A Thousand Shark's Teeth is much more orchestrated, polished, and ambitious than Bring Me the Workhorse, and draws even more from Shara Worden's classical training (as well as the work of Maurice Ravel, Tricky, Tom Waits, and painter Anselm Kiefer). The album's elegant instrumentation and arrangements are nothing if not impressive, whether they're relatively simple, as on "If I Were Queen," which concentrates on Worden's immaculate soprano and pizzicato strings, or lavish, as on "Inside a Boy," where chilly strings and keyboards rise to meet Worden's ice princess vocals.

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If My Brightest Diamond’s 2006 debut Bring Me The Workhorse was singer/songwriter Shara Worden’s dramatic move away from the clutches of her bud/boss Sufjan Stevens, A Thousand Shark’s Teeth is a damn fine second act. Beyond the too-grand operatic rush of her tunes, it should be noted that the New York-based Worden has a great shushy voice powered by a delicious warble at its center. It’s as if Björk and Jeff Buckley got together to listen to Queen’s A Day At The Races, only without ever becoming annoying.

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