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. 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. "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. The excellent "Be Brave" opens quietly, with muted drums and Worden's low growls: "I'm feeling scared and I am overwhelmed," she sings. It's a pleasantly hazy refrain Worden's best moments come when she's at her darkest and most uncertain. "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. 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. Strummed opener "We Added It Up" is punctuated by various strings and toots it unfolds like a Rube Goldberg contraption, all call and response. 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.
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