Audiences at the Austin City Limits performance of My Brightest Diamond were surprised by a Minor Mishap, but it was all part of the show. The live experience of the tour This Is My Hand, My Brightest Diamond’s ambitious and eclectic new LP, has been a full-tilt rock spectacle, and this time it included an appearance by Austin’s own Minor Mishap Marching Band.
Long fascinated by the spatial dimensions of sound, My Brightest Diamond vocalist and songwriter Shara Worden went into the planning of the This Is My Hand tour and record with every intention of making the concert a fully immersive sensory experience. In Austin, this meant recruiting the self-described “renegade circus-punk-brass band” Minor Mishap to parade through the crowd and onto the stage, marching, dancing, and pumping up the crowd with their own high-energy live show—a little bit Balkan, a little bit Dixieland, a little bit hip-hop—before breaking into the cadence for “Pressure,” the opening number of This Is My Hand and of MBD’s Austin City Limits set.
The entire Minor Mishap Marching Band performance, from the first steps of their procession through the crowd to the last note of “Pressure,” was captured in YouTube footage shot from the lawn in Austin, complete with honorary band member Worden in a drum-majoresque stage costume proudly accented with the yellow and black of the Minor Mishap uniform.
The local press went wild for My Brightest Diamond’s set, which the Austin Chronicle dubbed “one of the most underrated performances of the weekend.”
“Given the intensity of her songs,” said the Chronicle’s Doug Freeman, “Worden nevertheless projected exuberance and appreciation throughout, unleashing a guitar maelstrom” on the seething live version of This Is My Hand‘s complex and hypnotic “Resonance,” and concluding that “My Brightest Diamond has matured into a musical force.”
Now on tour in Europe, My Brightest Diamond returns to the US for another string of live dates from St. Paul to San Diego in November and December.