Wovenhand
Consider the Birds
Sounds Familyre
As the singing and guitar-playing third of
16 Horsepower,
David Eugene Edwards has spent the better part of the last decade creating a version of the
unusual folk music that has only recently come into vogue with hipsters.
As Wovenhand, Edwards ventures out on his own, using his solo project as a means of
personal exploration. His third album under this moniker, Consider the Birds, maintains a
steadfast spirituality, as if addressed to a congregation by a pastor with full awareness of his own
spiritual failings. After hearing just the album's first line, "Holy king cause my skin to crawl,"
the listener gets a sense that Edwards won't deliver the standard Christian fare. Then Edwards
finishes the thought: "Away from every evil thing." This type of lyrical tension keeps the
listener off-balance throughout the album. Edwards never lets his audience decide whether they're
listening to a sturdy prophet or a broken man.
Driven primarily by banjo, piano and acoustic guitar, Edwards' music reinforces this ambiguity.
Like Nick Cave, Edwards spouts
his religious meditations over a consistently dark sound, matching even his moments of lyrical
praise to dirge-like progressions. In "To Make a Ring," he sings, "We will weave our voice together/ together, and sing forever 'round
the throne," but the drone guitar, the rattles and the yelps sound nothing like the angelic choirs
described in the typical Sunday school.
Despite the dark tones on Consider the Birds, Edwards sings not as the lost
to the hopeless, but as one poor sinner to another, convinced of his safe fate but admitting that
"All our words rhyme with guilt tonight."
While the explicitly Christian content of the album might be off-putting to some, the music
remains compelling as hell. Edwards interweaves simple musical lines to build to emotional peaks
and to turn out the lights. By keeping the electronics subtle, he allows them to have full impact
on each appearance. Edwards modifies the tone of his songs with minimal shifts in sound,
allowing fluctuation within a given track as well as throughout the album. That ploy's especially
effective when he turns blunt in his lyrics, as on "Chest of Drawers." He sings,
"The world will bow, and knees will be broken for those who don't know how." The words are vicious,
but the music is so soft and lovely.
Due to the juxtaposition, listeners must take both words and sound into account when trying to
understand Edwards' faith. This type of contrast adds intrigue to Consider the Birds, but
intellectual structure alone isn't enough to make an album the type that you return to again
and again. In this case, Edwards demands a return not only so you can have multiple chances to
try to resolve his paradoxes, but also because his intensity offers its own gravitational weight.
That type of passion remains rewarding after repeated listens. Even amid the confident declarations
of faith, Edwards acknowledges his own needs, closing the album with "I pray him come, I pray him
soon." The album contains pleas and encouragement, violence and mercy, command and comfort.
Wovenhand's powerful statement deserves, like the considered birds of the field, not to go
unnoticed.
— Justin Cober-Lake (cober at nlx dot com)
