David Eugene Edwards - Hyacinth

Angry Metal Guy

In the hallowed corn cribs and haunted hollers of gothic Americana, no figure looms larger than David Eugene Edwards. As the resident expert on the darker corners of country music¹, I’ve followed Mr. Edwards’ career through its various iterations, which started way back in 1988 with the founding of The Denver Gentlemen and what would come to be known as the Denver Sound. This would encompass acts like Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, Munly and the Lee Lewis Harlots, Devotchka, and most notably, Edwards’ own 16 Horsepower and Wovenhand. The former of these launched Edwards to international notoriety within certain niche circles, which not coincidentally included goth rock and extreme metal fans. Clearly country in the twangiest, most unapologetically hick-ish ways, but heavy, pitch black and feral, this was most puzzling of all authentically Christian music. Many songs were devotional in nature, citing chapter/verse and venerating Christ by name. Edwards conveyed this allegiance, however, in apocalyptic style: fever dreams of temptation, damnation and deliverance. As 16 Horsepower gave way to Wovenhand in the early aughts, Edwards smoothed the roughest, yodel-iest corners to a more gothic folk-rock sound. The intensity remained, gaining Edwards a fiercely loyal following.²

It would seem that for the time being, Wovenhand is on hiatus, as David Eugene Edwards strikes out on his very first solo album of new material with a subtly altered sound, Hyacinth. Produced by Chelsea Wolfe bandmate Ben Chisholm—which likely explains why promo material was sent our way—Hyacinth takes the gothic folk of Edwards’ post-16 Horespower work in a more idiosyncratic direction by adding a persistent—but surprisingly tasteful—aresenal of electronic textures. At times he uses these in place of drums or other percussion, as on standout tracks “Seraph,” “Celeste” or “Bright Boy.” Elsewhere, as on “Howling Flower” or “Weaver’s Beam,” clicks, skitters and oscillating throbs stack in layers to conjure otherworldly, trance inducing atmosphere. At times this nearly reaches a sort of Americana drone, putting it in the realm of acts like Olson, Van Cleef, & Williams, albeit with Edwards’ familiar guitar lines and unmistakable voice. On that front, long gone are the feral yips and yowls of his earliest material. His delivery is resonant and forlorn, often finding a lower octave than he ever reached with Wovenhand, as displayed on “Celeste.”

Hyacinth by David Eugene Edwards

Hyacinth is an ideal solo debut. It is quintessentially David Eugene Edwards, yet the stripped back songwriting, new instrumental wrinkles and lyrical shift has the artist sounding more vital and fresh than he has in some time. While I have no doubt his faith remains as it ever has been, his lyrical themes have expanded into more universal, less pointed ruminations on one’s journey through the dark night of the soul. There are still Biblical references, such as the invoked “Rose of Sharon” in lead single “Lionisis,” but as a whole, Hyacinth touches on broader sources of myth and meaning in a way that frees and expands rather than waters down Edward’s spiritual insights. Under this new focus, he chases ghosts of truthfulness, “Alathea” in Greek, in the gorgeous track “Apparition,” or uncovers the perpetual hiding in the ephemeral as in “Hyacinth.”

If there is any criticism to level at Hyacinth, it’s that the tone is unrelentingly dour. Edwards enters each song with a similarly imperious but crestfallen voice and maintains this timbre through nearly the entire 44 minutes. That said, the more I listen to the record in its entirety, the more subtle and varied each cut sounds. It’s true that his tonal range has diminished, but these songs are far from a chore to get through. Some are more akin to vignettes that maintain the mood and momentum between standouts like “Celeste” and “Lionisis,” resulting in a record that flies by until a true shift in tone happens in the final two tracks. “Hall of Mirrors” acts as an instrumental buffer between the elegant bleakness of most the album and the final gift of a track, an interpretation of the English/Appalachian folk song “The Cuckoo.” For fans of 16 Horsepower’s album of reworked traditionals Folklore or for early Americana heads like me who scoured public library record collections for John and Alan Lomax recordings, this is obvious and very welcome pandering.

If this double review is your first introduction to David Eugene Edwards, I envy you. He has been an important artist to me at various points in my life, and even now as extreme metal makes up the vast majority of my musical consumption, I’d place him in a personal top ten list of musicians I couldn’t do without. With Hyacinth, his three-and-a-half-decade career adds another bright star to his glittering crown and announces what I hope will be a richly rewarding solo career.

Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Sargent House
Websites: davideugeneedwards.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/DavidEugeneEdwardsoffical
Releases Worldwide: September 29th, 2023

Carcharodon

Let’s be clear about this: David Eugene Edwards is not a metal musician and, as far as I know, has never played in a metal band but he is more metal than most of the stuff we cover on this blog. And certainly more metal than any of you. The sheer intensity that this man can generate on stage is nothing short of spellbinding. 16 Horsepower’s live album, Hoarse, is one of my top 20 albums of all time and, perhaps, guided me into more extreme music in a way. Seeing Edwards perform in 2002, as leader of 16HP, at the Mean Fiddler in London remains the single best gig I have ever been to.³ 16 Horsepower disbanded many years ago and Edwards has since released over a dozen albums as Wovenhand. That catalog represents a slow, progressive journey away from the dark country and folk of 16HP, particularly on more recent outings like Refractory Obdurate and Star Treatment, which are more experimental rock, dabbling in drone and electronica also. Hyacinth is Edwards’ first release under his own name—the fact that I had an advance copy of it for the last few weeks, whatever the album’s quality, is possibly the highlight of my tenure here at AMG—so what can we expect from Edwards, as David Eugene Edwards?

Hyacinth feels like it’s the bridge between the two main eras of Edwards’ sound. Opening track “Seraph” is all distorted, effects-laden vocals, pulsing percussion and folksy strummed strings, but then we move into “Howling Flower,” which could easily be by early Wovenhand, reminding me, particularly of Blush Music. Meanwhile mid-album cuts “Apparition” and (personal highlight) “Bright Boy” have that yearning edge of spiritual despair to them which defined cuts from 16HP’s Folklore, like the cover of Hank Williams’ ”Alone and Forsaken.” The stuttering, electronic-driven percussion, which walks a line between drone (“Weavers Dream”) and trip-hop (“Through the Lattice”), however, forms the consistent through-seam of Hyacinth, sometimes touching on the excellent Secret South (16HP), at other times leaning more toward Wovenhand’s Star Treatment.

Whether it was Edwards’ intention to stitch together the different eras of his incredible career, or something that simply happened organically, I don’t know, although I rather suspect the latter. Edwards has said that “Hyacinth was a sort of vision … A dream. I sought out of my old wooden banjo and nylon string guitar a hidden path … and created a new Mythos to myself of philosophical and spiritual ideas or concepts.” I’ve always found Edwards’ voice intensely moving, particularly on 16HP tracks like “South Pennsylvania Waltz,” “Harm’s Way” or “Strawfoot,” and that was due in significant part to the fact that he typically sang right on his break, giving his voice a fragile, fanatical and deeply emotional timbre. Although he was, in many ways, more experimental in Wovenhand, this broadly continued. Perhaps one of the most noticeable things about Hyacinth is that Edwards sings significantly lower for much of it, only approaching his break on closer “The Cuckoo,” and imbuing the record with a less immediate, more brooding, sound. At times, there’s something of Nick Cave or even 80s Leonard Cohen to his voice here.



It will be different for anyone coming to Hyacinth cold (for those poor souls among you, Cherd and I have put together the above playlist of some of our personal favorites from 16HP and Wovenhand)⁴ but those familiar with Edwards’ work, it’s impossible not to approach Hyacinth through the lens of his earlier bands. It is, therefore, fascinating to me that the markers for this record were clearly laid down on Wovenhand’s Refractory Obdurate (2014) and Silver Sash (2022). Yet those albums lacked many of the 16HP notes, which Hyacinth captures, immediately elevating it above later Wovenhand: it’s Edwards’ best and, crucially, most consistent work since Ten Stones (2008).

The sound is gorgeous, rich, and enveloping throughout. The percussion and electronica smooth and saturate what is otherwise fairly sparing work on guitar and banjo, and the complete tapestry works well. I think the deeper register Edwards has chosen to sing loses some of the raw emotiveness of his voice, however, and there are a few songs that don’t quite work for me, most notably the percussive “Weavers Beam” and the unnecessary (if unsettling) interlude “Hall of Mirrors,” that appears ten tracks in, where a direct path to closer “The Cuckoo,” would have worked better. I went into Hyacinth with equal measures of excitement and dread, but came out feeling pretty damn satisfied. Although the feverish religious fervor of his early work is far behind him now, Edwards has not abandoned the spiritual, which forms a dark and impassioned core to Hyacinth. While it was not love at first listen, the album has grown on me hugely and shows that, more than 30 years into his career, Edwards still has the ability to both surprise and captivate.



Rating: 3.5/5.0

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