Shara Worden's output as My Brightest Diamond is largely unclassifiable, a designation that's favorable in theory but can also be deeply stunting. For years, Worden has drifted between genres and tones (assimilating bits of the opera, classical, indie rock, folk, and experimental canons), letting her vocals act as the lone narrative thread and defining principle. These songs were hers because she was the only person who could sing them, and that felt like enough. Still, while confining artists to a single sound or style might be a philistine's errand, it also gives listeners something recognizable to cling to; there are no bits of boat floating in the water here, and her third LP, All Things Will Unwind, both suffers and succeeds in relation to its scope.
Already well known for her collaborations with chamber-oriented musicians (Sufjan Stevens, the National), Worden is now backed by the contemporary ensemble yMusic, who add plenty of playful bits to her oft-ethereal, shifting folk songs. Strummed opener "We Added It Up" is punctuated by various strings and toots; it unfolds like a Rube Goldberg contraption, all call and response. Worden sings about circumstantial incompatibility-- "If I was love/ Then you were shhh"-- with convincing fervor, before the track transforms into a quasi-reassuring mantra. "Love binds the world," Worden and her backing vocalists chant, but it's still hard to know (with good reason) whether those particular shackles are supposed to be a comfort or a curse. It's a pleasantly hazy refrain; Worden's best moments come when she's at her darkest and most uncertain.
The excellent "Be Brave" opens quietly, with muted drums and Worden's low growls: "I'm feeling scared and I am overwhelmed," she sings. "Be brave, dear one/ Be changed, be undone," she coaxes, and like "We Added It Up", the song proffers a tiny, passing glimpse of insecurity. Although Worden's vocal performances are varied and borderline virtuosic, it's easy to find yourself wishing for her voice to crack or crumple or fail, to be fallible in a way that's just as beautiful. The carefulness of All Things Will Unwind can feel impenetrable sometimes, and while her closest musical analogue is the equally ambitious Joanna Newsom, Worden lacks Newsom's oddball vulnerability-- it's the difference between performance and possession, and while there's certainly room for both, the former comes, always, with the risk of affectation. All Things Will Unwind's theatrical bent can read as goofy, if not wholly inscrutable (the slow-but-punchy "There's a Rat" feels cartoonish, while "High Low Middle" feels showy, staged). Mostly, though, Worden's drive-- to be so many things, to harness and perfect so many disparate sounds-- makes her work feel more distant than it should.
