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Woven Hand

Perhaps you've heard of 16 Horsepower--and if you haven't you're missing the best hillbilly goth ever recorded. Well, they split and David Eugene Edwards, the frontman, created his own side project a few years back named Woven Hand. This is less hillbilly-ish, more. . . eclectic--electric folk with a bit of atmospherics, and always in the background a pinch of Eastern European influences.

Edwards, much like Bill Mallonee, has a way of writing about the spiritual without sounding like. . . Yes(!?) or the ghetto shite of CCM. More than Mallonee, Edwards takes direct phrasing or metaphors from Biblical texts and makes them his own. For instance, his recast metaphor for the sin nature (or St. Paul's "Old Man") is the "Wooden Eye." The opening cut on the new album,"The Beautiful Axe," describes sanctification in a way I don't think I've ever heard before--
"Joy has come/It's risen with the sun/He, the highest on the horizon/Joy has come/In the man that I see/Beautiful the axe that flies at me."

There are a few others, but conveniently they don't come to mind at the moment.

His latest release Ten Stones (my second full album download from iTunes) is a continuation of his sound, though not in a redundant way. The hypnotic wail of "Kicking Bird," the electric blues of "White Knuckle Grip," the low noise of "untitled." Edwards remains true to his core sound, but manages to keep it fresh without resorting to strange novelty.

Brooding, prophetic, personal--Psalms for the 21st century--this is Woven Hand

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