WOVEN HAND

"The Beautiful Axe" starts with a swirling uptempo track with intense drumming and a catchy, yet dark, sound, while the next track, "Horsetail" sounds like a slow, fire and brimstone style, almost gothic in sound. "Not One Stone" has an almost cinematic flair to it, reminding one of old western songs from the likes of Johnny Cash with an increase in intensity in the instrumental break. This one harkens back to some of the dark and heavy tracks of David's prior band "16 Horsepower", but with a urgent and dangerous religious message to deliver. "Cohawkin Road" reminds one again of the old western cinematic themes, sparser this time, yet expansive like the land this sound brings to mind. "Iron Feather" has more keyboard usage, but processed to take away the brightness of the piano.

"White Knuckle Grip" has a slow boogie style that has a rough edge to it. This gives the music a unique feel and the vocals have a frantic quality to them. There are some interesting sounds from the keys that sounds like a harsh accordion. "Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars" is a cover of an old bossa nova tune, but its given the goth-cowboy feel in this interesting track. The basic beat is still there, but there is also a strange drone giving the foundation to the tune. It's always good to hear an old track made new with experimentation. "Kicking Bird" begins with a drum solo kicking out a tribal rhythm and being joined by almost sitar sounding drones, but the band doesn't resort to world music sounds, but instead they adjust the tribal style to sound like their style. It is a short, yet enjoyable variation of their goth-cowboy theme.

The mid-Eastern sound persists into the next track "Kingdom of Ice" which goes back to the frantic feel of the bands spiritual urgency. David really preaches hellfire on this track, the instrumentals go to a sparser sound to give room for the lyrics on this one. "His Loyal Love" again uses a drone-like quality under the acoustic pattern and a fuzzy guitar sound. The vocals are more subdued and in a foggy, almost psychedelic choral style with definite leanings toward psychedelic instrumentals. The last track is untitled and an atmospheric instrumental.

The overall album is quite unsettling, as Wovenhand's albums seem to be, even when at their most acoustic. But this album is quite heavy at times, at least in a foreboding way, as it sears its way into your mind. It is good to hear this much variety on a Wovenhand album, as it keeps this album sounding like some of their others giving it more character. The last half of the album suffers a bit from development, and I would have liked to have heard more expansion in those tracks, but overall, it is one of their better albums. Still, it's not quite a masterpiece, but it is an album I like to listen to often.

"The Threshingfloor" is the bands 7th album, released in 2010. The album really continues with that heavy, almost apocalyptic sound that still spouts out spiritual lyrics but done in a fire and brimstone style as before. The project used sparse instrumentation when they first started out, but has expanded to a full band as they are in this album.

Though the music is very root-sy, it is surprisingly dark for spiritual music. But that actually lends itself to the earlier folk style anyway. This album is full of that style, but it also takes from some traditional dance styles, and in this album, those are the best tracks as some of the usual ones are starting to feel a bit stale when you first hear them. As they grow on you, you get a better appreciation for them, but that doesn't change the fact that the overall feel of each album doesn't change much.

The better tracks here are the ones that sound least like songs from previous albums like "The Threshingfloor", "Singing Grass", the "New Order" cover "Truth", "Orchard Gate" and "Denver City". All of the other tracks are still okay tracks, they are just pretty much material that we have already heard from them.

As much as I love 16 Horsepower, I have a harder time having as much enthusiasm for Woven Hand. They are great for a listen once in a while, but, as I said, tend to sound to much the same. This is a pretty good album if you want to try out the sound of the band, and you will probably love it the first time you hear it, but if you've heard the band before, then you have pretty much heard what is offered on this album.

As much as I like David's neo-folk music, I can't really consider this anything but a collectable item of interest mostly to fans. The music itself remains pretty much acoustic throughout, with David's unique voice and minimal instrumentation. The songs are good, but nothing special really, and as to why these particular songs were chosen I can't say, because they are not necessarily the best tracks off of the individual albums, and in reality, I like the originals better. I believe this was done to make things feel more personal, and it is almost like a private "unplugged" style concert.

The lyrics deal with the usual things, religious, yet dark, which is one of the unique things of the music of Woven Hand. I think a new listener would not be very appreciative of this release however. You would be better off looking for a different full length album from the band than this one. Only for collectors and fans.

Like I said, it is mostly about him in this album. He is accompanied by Steve Taylor and Daniel McMahon on some of these tracks and this adds a fuller sound to the album overall, but even in the more sparse tracks, there is a lot of inventiveness. Things can sound a little same-y at times on this album, but not enough to make it ever get boring. This is known as neo-folk and it does have progressive elements throughout in that David is not afraid to explore the genre. There is a bit of the gothic element here, carried over from his other band, and it is true that this is dark folk. But there is a lot of spiritual uplift in the lyrics among the dark sounds. It's like a huge spark of hope in the middle of a stark landscape. And it all works so well. Minor keys are used a lot, the vocals are dark sounding, and, except for a few exceptions like the banjo in "Glass Eye" and the piano hooks in the beautiful "Stormy and Pictures", the songs can have a slight drone feeling even though drones are not used. "Arrow Head" has a nice, almost upbeat Celtic-Western lilt but still with that minor key sound. So even with the overall sound, there is still plenty of variety and surprises. Even though it is more of a solo album, it doesn't sound like one.

I love the sound and the attitude on this album and how well it mixes with the folk element. With this band being on the archives, I would not be surprised to see "Fleet Foxes" or "Grizzly Bear" eventually added on the site under Prog Folk, and I have hope that maybe they will show up here some day. Woven Hand is still active and have released several albums since this album. They have incorporated more progressive elements as time goes on and are now a full band. Things get better, but that's definitely not to say that this album isn't great. I still love the starkness, David's voice is perfect for this music, and the clash of the promise of hope against the dark soundscape is very moving and effective. I can't call it essential, that might be reserved for later albums, but I still think this is an excellent album nonetheless.

While "Not One Stone" demonstrates that Woven Hand's fitness level is up to the task, "White Knuckle Grip" is a dressed up big old boogie blues number in all the worst ways, and "Kicking Bird" is yet another wholly unsubtle megillah of rants and gashes that, at 2:14, runs about...er..2:14 too long. Even the ostensible showcase opener "The Beautiful Axe" is essentially shrouded in oppressive dread. Now, Woven Hand has always been this way, but somehow they knew how to skirt the boundaries while still respecting musicality, until here.

The album does include several isolated peaks in the form of "Horsetail", the achingly Gothic "Iron Feather", and "Kingdom of Ice", but in this divide and conquer episode, the thrashers win out, so avoid this stoning and try "Mosaic" instead.

And surely enough, DEE sits down on his stool and will not be moving for most of the concert, apart from the odd bumcheek switcheroo to reach for his second guitar or his mandolin (no banjo in this concert). Only contrabassist Humbert seems less static, and not just when reaching for his acoustic guitar (three or four tracks in the course of the evening). DEE is the only addressing the public, but it's much less than minimal: he will only say two or three words (in Dutch, to show the crowd that he's at least done some kind of effort). The least we can say is that the crowd is not really returning much undue or overwhelming adoration: polite applause with the odd unfollowed whistle, but absolutely no passion or enthusiasm.

Candles and purple curtains don't really help out making this concert anything close to a mass either; it seems that most of DEE's engaged lyrics are mostly lost on an otherwise fairly Anglophile Dutch crowd. As for the setlist proposed, at first sight/listyen, I was happy enough to recognize three tracks from my fave album Mosaic, but unfortunately, they were unfortunately drowned in a sea of sameness. Indeed the set doesn't seem to feature any highlight or major crowd favourites, and worse, except for Humbert and Metaxas, they seem to be going through the motions. I can't reall tell you if the set-closer Whisthling Girl really provoked the crowd to call out for an encore, as the footage cut seems to imply, with the Off The Cut track offered as a afterthought, more than a reward to a passionate public.

So my initial fears were indeed confirmed, because overall this DVD (didn't bother with the Cd, since it's exactly the same concert) proves a fairly boring affair, which is even a tad dismaying, since DEE's voice sounds so engaged and emotional, but WH's music fails to really deliver the gusto and lacks somewhat the guts one could expect from a supposedly so-impassioned composer. Not sure this is the kind of DVd that will prompt inquisitive fans to check WH live, but this writer surely thinks that this film is a fairly reliable witness to the band's general very-average stage presence.

Musically, there isn't much to say that hasn't been said on his previous two albums - and my embarrassing scribbles about them. We're far away from the semi-medieval-sounding tracks of Mosaic (still my fave by far), and still in a slightly folky (at times anyway) alternative rock, but DEE's banjo twiddles are relatively rare on TLS. Indeed, at times, we're facing some Neil Young-like fiery guitar licks (King O King) courtesy of French or the slightly calmer Closer. One of the better track is Maize (obviously the title track in disguise given the album's artwork), a fairly solemn track with some timely piano mixed in.

Not any better or any worse than his previous albums, one might wonder what would be the point to get TLS, when you've heard it all elsewhere in the band's discography. Of course, if you're an unconditional fan, no doubt TLS will be yet another indispensable album, but for me, it's not essential, so I was happy to borrow it from the library. In other words, if you're only going to buy one WH product this year, you might want to check out their Live At Roepaen album.

Really for fans only, but if you're a Woven Hand fan, this is a "brainer".... You might want to leaf through the booklet to see if it's worth yur while and cash.

The tracks on Ten Stones are all standard 3- to 5-minute tunes, but the sophistication of each individual song arrangement is nothing to scoff at. The verse-chorus- verse songwriting method is mostly eschewed, and Edwards instead opts for complete story-like compositional methods, like listening to little vignettes of religious punishment and sorrow. These songs aren't progressive in the usual stereotyped "epic" composition style, but the compact and dense compositional sophistication is where the progressiveness lies.

Ten Stones is a rugged, dusty sounding album. The standard rock instrumentation is so dirty and gritty, I can almost imagine the band, being parched and distraught, playing in the desert during a weak sandstorm as tumbleweeds and dismembered cacti blow across the landscape while scorpions and snakes burrow into the ground for shelter from what could possibly be an isolated drought as willed by God during a fit of anger against the sinning few. Not just the sound of the instruments themselves, but the passionate power of the players comes through with every strum of the guitar and every hit of a drum. Edwards especially offers up a great performance as always -- he sings with the most passionate, powerful, preachy vocals that sound like he's seriously channeling the upset voice of his lord through inexplicably comprehensible glossolalia. The production also enhances the overall musical experience, adding more of that dusty, dry, summery heat atmosphere.

As with most Woven Hand albums, or any musical project with Eugene Edwards at its helm, each song on this album stands out on its own. One of the most powerful songs on Ten Stones is "Iron Feather", a slow, piano-driven ballad whose sonic painful drama is completely oppressive, with lyrics portraying nothing but imagery of sadness of various sorts, getting the point across that our world is and always has been full of pain and misery. The following track, "White Knuckle Grip", with great contrast, is a groovy and extremely noisy country-blues song where Eugene Edwards preaches nearly spoken-word religious imagery into your brain while a confused accordion melody wobbles around in the periphery. Besides being mostly a country/folk rock album, there are moments that break from this most -- "Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars" is a smooth latin-jazz or bossa nova styled song with Edwards doing what is basically his best Sinatra impression, with beautiful mellotron providing a dramatic backup. The final two tracks are mostly powerful atmospherics, which Edwards has been utilizing since he started this band, and it really makes for a great dramatic exit to a wonderfully dramatic album.

Comparing this album to anything besides previous Woven Hand albums or anything from 16 Horsepower is a bit difficult, as everything by these two projects have a very unique sound. Basically, this is some of the roughest, dirtiest, manliest Christian-themed country/folk rock music with the added benefit of progressive composition that you'll be able to find anywhere, like a country western soundtrack to the impending apocalypse.

Particularly notable are the simply effective keyboard lines in said opener, the plaintive "Oil on Panel", and the ominous "The Speaking Hands". Edwards' voice has never sounded more emotive and it looks good on him, but rest assured this is still largely shrouded in cathartic tristesse. "Down in Yon Forest" is an exception that veers into trad British Isles territory and works surprisingly well. "Chest of Drawers" is a largely acoustic ballad that sounds like it was recorded under a desert moon, with sparse inventive percussion and a simply appealing melody and lyrics. Unfortunately, the processed voices and sounds of "Off the Cuff" and the grating earnestness of "To Make a Ring" represent another facet that remains an impediment to consistent enjoyment.

"Consider the Birds", like spring migration, is a pleasure in itself but is even more noteworthy for what it portends.