My Brightest Diamond’s Shara Worden we fully expected to be a lot darker than she turned out to be. She was imagined as not quite sullen and moody, but at the very least, outwardly pessimistic and a professional black cloud ruminator. It was a wrongful assumption and one that we’re not at all proud of as the majestic and sprite Worden was super cheerful and unequivocally one of the loveliest people we’ve ever had the pleasure of having visit our humble, humble studio. Though we aren’t necessarily referring to our current relationship with Worden, she’s someone who, you get the sense, becomes best buds with people in short order. It’s about what Joel Shearer – who was the sound engineer for Bring Me The Workhorse — said of the first day he spent with her to work on the record. You roll easily into a tranquil connection with where Worden’s coming from in her art. She throws down ghetto slang – circa the earlier days of the Beastie Boys and Run-DMC eras – when making side comments. When she’s in agreement or she’s content, there’s a, “Word” for you. It’s her awesome or rad. She’s the kind of person who jokes about bringing The Hope Diamond on tour with her and when asked about its specifics, indulges you – likely with the help of Google – and tells you that the deep-blue diamond resides in the Smithsonian Institution and weighs 45.52 carats. If she didn’t look it up, girl’s got phat knowledge of diamonds. She was here this day with Los Angeles band Pedestrian, an insanely talented group of musicians who have worked with Gnarls Barkley, Damien Rice, Carly Simon, Fiona Apple and others, acting as her backing band and it produced a different interpretation of each of the four songs from the album that she chose to do. As you’ll soon hear, she – they – were jaw-droppingly good on this afternoon. It was a day when Worden’s tour manager and friend/back-up singer Hella Rader asked me where she could go to find a copy of the newest issue of Rolling Stone. There were no newsstands within walking distance so she did without. I found out later, renting “The Devil and Daniel Johnston” at Blockbuster that night the reason for the inquiry. It was the first time that Te Decemberists’ Colin Meloy publicly proclaimed his love for her record, raving about her in the magazine’s pages, with Borat staring out from the cover. (Now, this spring, MBD is going to be opening for The Decemberists. Not bad.) Pat and the members of Pedestrian ended the visit getting into a discussion about the greatness of Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew’s exhaustive book, Recording The Beatles, which weighs in at 540 pages and over 11 pounds. It’s like pornography to those guys – the choicest pornography. It turned out that multi-instrumentalist Zac Rae was friends with one of the authors. Small world. – Sean Moeller   

First song
Magic Rabbit (My Brightest Diamond) [4.99MB] [5219 downloads]


– original version appears on Bring Me The Workhorse
This song was the first song that we recorded for Bring Me The Workhorse because I wanted the sound of the entire album to be centered around this vibe and texture. The boys just took the rock to another level!

Second song
Something Of An End (My Brightest Diamond) [5.08MB] [4729 downloads]


– original version appears on Bring Me The Workhorse
Zac played electronic textures for this song on the album, then after he had layed down his tracks, I based the string parts in the verses around those synth sounds. On the album I think there is a dialogue between the organic and the synthetic, man and machine. But for this live recording, the electicity takes over and we gave ourselves over fully to the rock aspects of this song. Woo hoo!!!

Third song
Freak Out (My Brightest Diamond) [2.40MB] [4540 downloads]


– original version appears on Bring Me The Workhorse
Um, hello, this was the funnest song to record, ever. I found the piano in the room and jumped on top of it and started tap dancing and we all started channeling Tom Waits for a quick moment, well especially Zac. We were joined on the chorus by the lovely and gorgeous Hella Fabulous.

Fourth song
Gone Away (My Brightest Diamond) [4.04MB] [4648 downloads]


– original version appears on Bring Me The Workhorse
I wanted to record this one with Pedestrian because I thought that the sounds of the electric guitars brought a different quality, an almost winter sound in contrast to the warmth of the strings from the album. The feeling seems more hollow and barren to me.

My Brightest Diamond’s Outstanding Take-Away Shows Video Session