May 04 - Porto, PT @ Hard Club May 05 - Lisbon, PT @ RCA Club May 06 - Madrid, ES @ Kristonfest May 09 - Bologna, IT @ Bronson May 12 - Thessaloniki, GR @ Fix Factory of Sound May 13 - Athens, GR @ Fuzz Club May 21 - Milan, IT @ Circolo Magnolia Segrate May 23 - Liege, BE @ Reflektor May 24 - Groningen, NL @ Oosterpoort May 25 - Haarlem, NL @ Patronaat May 26 - Sint Niklass, BE @ De Casino May 27 - Utrecht, NL @ Tivoli Vredenburg
Download: Come Brave; The Hired Hand; All Your Waves; Golden Blossom
On Star Treatment, Wovenhand prime mover David Eugene Edwards locates the shared space between Native American and Middle Eastern modes, with an exciting exploration of spirituality and music that draws Montana close to Mesopotamia. It’s a music parched in desert sun, lost in forest gloom, abandoned on endless prairies: land and elements dominate the imagery which Edwards declaims with stern, religiose intensity, against arrangements ranging from the Gun Club-style gothic rockabilly of “The Hired Hand” to the abstract avalanche of drums and guitars harking, in “Swaying Reed”, to the Tigris. Elsewhere, the dense, droning weave of guitars in “Crook And Flail” and “Golden Blossom” recalls The Byrds, Popol Vuh and Tuareg desert-blues. At its best, it’s quite thrilling: the galloping drums and strident guitar clangour of “Come Brave” perfectly evokes its Indian imagery, while “All Your Waves” develops a mysterious, tsunami-like power all its own. Majestic stuff.
David Eugene Edwards of Wovenhand talked to Music & Riots for their latest issue - check it out HERE, and check out their review of "Star Treatment" on page 130.
Long-time devotees may still favour the sparse, acoustic fervour of earlier Wovenhand records, but it’s undeniable that David Eugene Edwards’ band have benefited hugely from becoming noisier and more muscular in recent times. 2014’s Refractory Obdurate was almost universally acclaimed and further cemented the strange but oddly natural relationship Edwards’ music has with the metal underground. Superficially, Star Treatment is simply more of the same sublimely stormy and electrified neo-folk. No less compelling than anything else its primary composer has done, it feels more like a consolidation of the current Wovenhand lineup’s intuitive chemistry than an attempt to expand their sound, and yet despite lacking any one definitive money shot to rival the mid-song ascension of the previous album’s Corsicana Clip, there are golden moments in abundance.
The opening Come Brave is a scabrous call-to- arms, its wall of clanging guitars exuding confrontational vehemence and David Eugene Edwards’ sonorous cries piercing through the squall like a siren in a thunderstorm. It also conjures more of that unsettling but obscenely exciting wildness that this more rock-driven incarnation of the band have steadily learned to harness. The languorousSwaying Reed is almost doom in delivery, but the untamed resonance of those guitars is more redolent of Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s feedback experiment Arc and there is something deliciously Swans-like about the sheer power behind each transient crescendo. Mid-album epic All Your Waves is even more compelling; a sustained and unnerving, Nephilim-tinged mirage, its blistering evocation of windswept plains and profound revelations could have been comically overwrought in less sincere hands, but Edwards’ utmost conviction ensures that the drama is very real and his comrades’ ensemble performance is nothing short of magical. More succinct material like the gothic rock rumble of Crook And Flail andGo Ye Light’s menacing post-punk thud may not quite hit the same heights of disorientating efficacy, but they each exhibit just enough of Wovenhand’s glowering soul to earn their place. It may be bigger, bolder and louder these days but there are no discernible fissures in Edwards’ holy vision and his band of brothers march on with heads held high.
Wovenhand’s new album Star Treatment is officially out today in stores, streaming, and digital platforms. See some of the rave reviews already coming in below.
Wovenhand begin their European tour on Monday, September 12th and will be joined by Emma Ruth Rundle on most shows. Tickets are available HERE, with a full list of dates below.
WOVENHAND & EMMA RUTH RUNDLE LIVE 2016
Sep 12 COLOGNE, DE – Gebäude 9 Sep 13 FRANKFURT, DE – Zoom Sep 15 BERN, CH – ISC Sep 16 ZURICH, CH – Bogen F Sep 17 VIENNA, AT – Flex Sep 18 BUDAPEST, HU – A38 Sep 20 SALZBURG, AT – Rockhouse Sep 21 MUNICH, DE – Ampere Sep 22 LEIPZIG, DE – UT Connewitz Sep 23 BERLIN, DE – Heimathafen Sep 24 HAMBURG, DE – Reeperbahn Festival * Sep 26 ARHUS, DK – Train Sep 27 OSLO, NO – John Dee Sep 29 HELSINKI, FI – Tavastia * Sep 30 STOCKHOLM, SE – Nalen Oct 01 LUND, SE – Mejeriet Oct 02 COPENHAGEN, DK – Vega Jr. Oct 04 EINDHOVEN, NL – Effenaar Oct 05 AMSTERDAM, NL – Melkweg Oct 06 LEUVEN, BE – Het Depot Oct 07 GENT, BE – Handelsbeurs Oct 08 CHARLEROI, BE – L’Eden Oct 10 LILLE, FR – L’Aéronef Oct 11 PARIS, FR – La Maroquinerie Oct 13 ORLEANS, FR – L’Astrolabe Oct 14 GRENOBLE, FR – La Belle Electrique Oct 15 FEYZIN, FR – L’Epicerie Moderne Oct 16 TOULOUSE, FR – La Rex Oct 18 LONDON, UK – The Dome
* Wovenhand only
“Edwards belongs to an older breed. He’s in there with Cave, Michael Gira, Carla Bozulich, Dan Higgs, Polly Jean Harvey, David Tibet. He’s a mystic wanderer, the type who seeks transcendence in darkness as well as in light. He never hides his voice. It’s a huge, barreling wail, a declamatory roar. And the music matches the majesty of that voice, calling on traditions that can sometimes go past ancestral country music and into tribal-chant territory. This is big music, a type of music that we don’t often hear anymore. It’s music for calling down heaven. There is plenty of great music coming out these days, but very little of it is concerned with summoning spirits in that same way. We don’t get many albums like this anymore.” - Stereogum, Album of the Week
"Beyond the admirable sincerity and devotion, the record is full of emotive hooks, thundering percussion, psychedelic twang, ethnic rhythms, and formless meditations on what mysteries reside in the heavens above. Edwards’ musical palette has truly become limitless, and Star Treatment takes Wovenhand’s sound to its most realized and accomplished.” - Noisey
“Star Treatment is actually a damn fine album. It's catchy, it's gritty, and it just feels like a rock n' roll album should.” - Metal Injection
On Friday, Nick Cave and his Bad Seeds will release their new album Skeleton Tree, and other than the soul-wrecking first single “Jesus Alone,” I haven’t heard it yet. Nobody has. Cave’s label has sent out no advances, which means music critics like me are tingling with anticipation just like everybody else. This is Cave’s first album since his son fell off a cliff and died last year. Cave is an artist with a long, storied history of staring deeply into the darkest parts of the human experience, of drinking that darkness in and spitting it back out all over us. The fact that he’s back to recording music so soon after such a life-reshaping personal catastrophe is a miraculous testament to his own strength. Even before hearing the album, I can feel the weight of its presence. It’s out there, waiting. And in a few days, it will be stomping all over my soul. But now, there is a chance, however slight, that Skeleton Tree will not be the best Nick Cave album that comes out on Friday.
I’m being glib here, of course. Star Treatment, the new Wovenhand album, is not a Nick Cave album. It’s not fair to Cave to imply that it is. It’s also not fair to David Eugene Edwards, the Denver musician who has been leading Wovenhand since 2001, since it was a side project of his mutant-country band 16 Horsepower. But Edwards has been treading some of the same territory as Cave for a long time now. His music deals in the same darkness, the same obsessiveness. His songs are steeped in the history of American music, of folk and country and blues, and yet they owe as much to some of the clanging, confrontational forms that followed: punk, metal, hardcore, noise-rock. His songs sound like incantations, like prayers bubbling up from below. He’s not Cave, but he’s cut from the same cloth.
