Album Of the Month: Wovenhand

Released this week by Sounds Familyre, The Threshingfloor marks erstwhile 16 Horsepower frontman David Eugene Edwards' sixth album as Wovenhand. It's a bone-shaking rocker leavened by spirituality, and a career capper in every sense of the term.

By Jennifer Kelly

"Oh beat the drum for him, oh holy measure, strum and buzz for Him, is our only treasure," booms David Eugene Edwards in his echo-haunted, arena-scale voice on "Oh Holy Measure." And yes, in this sixth full-length as Wovenhand (following more than a decade with 16 Horsepower), there are plenty of driving drums, an onslaught of raw and stinging open-chorded strumming, an ominous undercurrent of buzz throughout, and, perhaps most important, the palpable, overriding presence of the "Him."  One of 2010's most intense and riveting albums, The Threshingfloor (Sounds Familyre) infuses the bone-shaking transport of rock music with spiritual struggle.

Edwards' core band - Pascal Humbert on bass and Ordy Garrison on drums - is back from Ten Stones, and they continue to become larger-sounding and more sure. It's hard to even remember that Wovenhand was once a solo project. The driving rhythms that these two contribute have become integral to the band's sound.

The rhythmic drama underscores a sense of headlong search and turmoil. There is nothing complacent or settled about Edwards' faith. Indeed, the title track's central metaphor is of one earthly suffering, of life as a violent threshing that shakes out the small grain of good in us. The song, the album's best, underscores its point with a relentless, pummeling beat, and guitars that sting like whiplashes.

The title cut is the first of several Threshingfloor tracks to employ Middle Eastern sounds, this title cut bristles with multi-toned percussion and some sort of primitive wind instrument. It's a violently propulsive track, faster than the rest of the album and imbued, despite its darkness, with a kind of physical release.   "Terre Haute," near the album's close," has the same wild sense of transport, a high shepherd's flute (that's guest artist Peter Eri) careening over outsized rhythms. "Raise Her Hands" brings Edwards' affinity for Native American forms to the front, with its ritual beat and interlayered, incantatory vocals. These are heady, intoxicating cuts, short-circuiting any attempts at analysis and going directly to the primitive, spiritual parts of the brain. Even Edwards is sometimes overcome by the rush of these songs, singing in tongues or soaring, wordlessly, in choral flourishes.

The Threshingfloor, like all Wovenhand albums, is full of drama, yet it also includes intervals of respite. "His Rest," coming a little before the midway point, is the first of these, its pace slow, its tone serene, its arrangement eased by cello. Later, "Truth" has the echo-washed keyboards, the stately percussion of the Cure. Odd little "Wheatstraw," only a minute long has a Latin lilt to its drum machine and keyboard riff. Closer "Denver City" sounds lighthearted and garage-y and oddly like the Eagles of Death Metal, though minus the raunch.

These tracks allow listeners to catch their breath, providing a bit of a rest between barrages of pounding, pummeling intensity. Yet what you remember, what makes Wovenhand so compelling, is the struggle Edwards' work embodies. Some Christian songwriters attempt to capture the solace of religion, the tranquility and sureness that they expect from heaven. Edwards stays right here on the threshing floor, in the hard, sweaty midst of life, suffering now but looking towards salvation.   

[Wovenhand is currently on tour opening for Tool. A European and Middle Eastern tour follows in July. Details and dates here. Photo by Gary Isaacs.]