Duke Garwood - Garden of Ashes

The Guardian 80

(Heavenly)

Duke Garwood’s last album, 2015’s trippy Heavy Love, saw him break out of the shadows and into limited acclaim: a British Mark Lanegan soundalike whose own gravelly tone and gravitas were actually equal to Lanegan’s. Garden of Ashes is less heavy on the guitars, but still simmers eloquently with the heat haze of Garwood’s opiated take on the blues – the blues of the California desert, specifically, given the debt to Lanegan and Queens of the Stone Age’s studio. Loose, heady and sensual by turns, Garden of Ashes surveys both the parlous state of the world and blasted inner landscapes with resonant instrumentation, rattlesnake percussion and a thousand-yard stare. And yet, on songs such as Sleep, the overriding impression is one of succour.

Sun Feb 05 08:00:08 GMT 2017

The Guardian 60

(Heavenly)

It won’t surprise you to learn that Duke Garwood is a collaborator of Mark Lanegan, such is his gravel-raked voice and penchant for syrupy, swampy folk (perhaps Lanegan only works with people who sing as if they’ve likewise been licking cacti). The Londoner’s sixth solo album gives the impression that he has been stocking up on Nick Cave films and hanging out in Joshua Tree: it has an otherworldly, heady quality suggesting sun-baked desert days, croc-skin boots and a Chevrolet gently rolling along empty highways. Tracks such as the gospel-tinged Blue, doomy foreplay track Hard Dreams and the Cohen-ish acoustic lament Sleep suggest love songs for the end of the world. What is most striking about the album, however, is not its romantic gloom, but its pace: sleaze slowed down to a slumbersome drawl. While everything sounds lovely and moody – understated desert blues for a night in without the smartphone – beware the risk that it might send you to literal sleep, too.

Thu Feb 02 21:15:41 GMT 2017