Worden sounds every bit the driven artist here, and she grabs hold of you with a PJ Harvey–like sense of musical aplomb.

“She reflects a light unlike any other.” That sentence appears in bold type, by itself, near the beginning of the press release for My Brightest Diamond’s debut recording. It’s a helpful way to begin this review, because Shara Worden, the one-woman tour de force responsible for the dazzling originality of Bring Me the Workhorse, is indeed unlike almost any female singer/songwriter you’ve heard before. Raised in Michigan, the New York–based Worden is a trained opera singer, but she’s got the instincts of an emotionally committed cabaret singer or a rapture-bound Björk in full Vespertine mode.

The 11 songs here create a deeply haunted atmosphere, a sort of noirish romantic landscape where you toss and turn all night, wondering if love will drive you completely mad—or find you waking up with renewed passion and fresh determination. The restless opener “Something of an End” reveals a simmering sense of dark drama, with Worden building to her first musical crescendo on the repeated phrase “beautiful and terrible,” followed rapidly by her vivid enunciation of the lyric “heaven and hell come k-k-krrrashing down.” Worden sounds every bit the driven artist here, and she grabs hold of you with a PJ Harvey–like sense of musical aplomb. “Come and fly away with me tonight,” she intones more alluringly in the odd spellbinder “Dragonfly,’ an inspired composition in which the delicious string arrangement complements her voice perfectly.

Evidently, Worden wrote the string parts herself—along with her de-tuned Gibson electric, they provide a distinctive sound for her powerful voice to weave its wondrous way through. “Freak Out” may be short, but it’s utterly compelling, with a sinister goth-like three-note bass riff alternating with Worden’s frenzied shrieking of that title, yet in the most purposeful, chilling manner. By this point, most listeners should be awestruck over the gripping originality unfolding, but the best is still to come. “Disappear” is truly a gorgeous chamber pop song with lush orchestration and a repeated clicking sound that acts on your subconscious. Worden turns in one of her most stirring vocals; on the refrain “I don’t think we’re meant to stay here very long,” she hits a jaw-dropping peak the last time she sings it, ascending to an impossibly high register and stretching it through six descending notes. Her operatic training clearly makes moments like this possible, yet the emotional response it provokes transcends analysis. This is simply sublime musical art.

Then there’s the rich melancholy of “The Good and the Bad Guy,” a sort of stately dirge in which a wisp of a percussion track and minimal strings push Worden’s pure-as-snow voice front and center. “Magic Rabbit,” the somber “Workhorse,” the spooky, angst-ridden “Gone Away”—each song is unforgettable in its own way. “Get me off, get me off/For this is a ride going nowhere,” sings Worden in that latter track’s most romantically disenchanted moment. On the contrary, dear Shara—the musical journey you’ve documented with Bring Me the Workhorse has given us perhaps the finest and most original female solo work of the year: a bright diamond, indeed.

RIYL: Portishead, Nina Simone, the softer moments of PJ Harvey or Björk

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