“Beauty is the new punk rock”, declared Joan Wasser, aka Joan As Police Woman, and how right she is. In 2010, there seem no truer words: Fleet Foxes are the leaders of a whole movement towards pastoral beauty, and Grizzly Bear is garnering such unlikely fans as hip-hop icon Jay-Z. Artists like Sufjan Stevens and Shearwater balance an experimental spirit with a sophisticated sense of grace and beauty. The time, now more than ever, seems right for My Brightest Diamond.

Shara Worden, the woman at the heart of My Brightest Diamond, knows beauty in many forms. Most obvious is her voice, which moves with supple grace from a husky swoon to a keening wail and into a fluttering breeze, all delivered with astounding control.

The set opener, Dreaming Awake, was a powerful showcase for her range, sweeping from the intimate tones of lovers half-asleep in one another’s arms to the chorus’s howl of loosed passion in stunning fashion. Before the first verse was over, the crowd cooed and swayed in rushes of pleasure, the first of many to come.

Lesser musicians would be content to trade on the timbre and range of such an amazing voice, but Worden is too sophisticated a songwriter to hide behind it. Never beholden to her voice, she serves the song with her delivery, animating the stories at the hearts of her songs with her subtle inflections and shifts in intonation. The dynamic shifts of Something of an End carry a sense of elemental force, held tight in the verses only to be loosed in the chorus as she cries, “It was beautiful! And terrible!”.

Performing seems to come as a natural part of Shara Worden. Not only in the effortless majesty of her voice, or the seamless ease with which she constructs her highly sophisticated songs, but also in the very act of being on stage. Some performers feel like their stage presence is a well-rehearsed act, and can be no less charming for it, but Worden seems born to the stage. At ease under the spotlights, she displays a sharp sense of humour and an endearing humility without a trace of artifice. The audience, so thoroughly charmed, would no doubt have stood and listened to her tell fables all night (as she did, recounting with verve and childish enthusiasm a George McDonald tale).

The music was ultimately the focus of the evening, though, and by the time she introduced her spine-tingling cover of Nina Simone’s Feeling Good, your correspondent was cursing the fact that he attended the second of two shows and not both. Crowded with too many other highlights to recount here (having not even touched on the stunning Colin Stetson’s baritone sax skills), this performance is the sort that people will discuss with vigour for days, weeks and maybe even months to come. When she returns (and let if be a question of ‘when’ and not ‘if’), Shara Worden and My Brightest Diamond will be met with a loving crowd, rest assured.

Check out the photos from the gig here