Wovenhand – The Threshing Floor

I’m not sure you can talk about David Eugene Edwards’ music without talking about his theology. It’s not because he makes quote-unquote Christian music — really, it’s because he transcends it. Since he began performing as Wovenhand, Edwards has settled into a cozy niche on the farthest possible fringe of Jesus music, but back in his days fronting 16 Horsepower, he always found more support in forward-thinking Americana and alt-country circles than in CCM proper. No surprise there, since his songs sound more like murder ballads or gothic horror stories than praise choruses. Where a lot of Christian popular music amounts only to so much spiritually-minded feel-goodery, Edwards’ music will put the fear of God into you — literally.

His intensity reveals a lot about what he believes. I’m not sure that I could place him in any specific theological or denominational camp, but I do know this: He’s a fundamentalist, in the least politically-charged sense of the term. He believes the Bible is true. He believes God is a holy God, and perfectly capable of judgment and wrath. He sings about God’s awful grace, God’s sovereignty, and God’s often painful acts of providence. I’ll bet he’s a Calvinist.

I mention all of this because the latest Edwards album — his fifth or sixth as Wovenhand, depending on how you want to count — is, as ever, an album fully shaped by its auteur’s theology. In the music of David Eugene Edwards, Christ has never been our buddy — Christ is King. The Threshingfloor is an album about — among other things — Christ’s global dominion. It’s about a God who is God of the whole world. And the music reflects that: Where the typical Edwards album refracts country, rock, and Americana influences through shards of broken, stained glass, this one broadens the scope to include traditional folk elements from Asia and Eastern Europe, marrying them to American folk forms that are as broad and as high as a Western landscape.

It is, like all Edwards albums, marked firstly by its fervor, its primal howl, its biblical urgency, and on that front you have to admire how the man can keep making albums so distinct from one another while making them all sound overwhelmingly like Wovenhand albums. And this one is a Wovenhand album through and through — but it’s also his biggest departure yet. The rock backbone of Consider the Birds and Ten Stones has more or less vanished; the album has a bit more in common with Mosaic in its emphasis on texture and mood, but it delivers on the promise of that album more fully. This is an album where stringed instruments and hand percussion — everything here is acoustic — dance in jittery, rhythmic alignment, hypnotic and mesmerizing, at times virtually droning, dusty beats suggesting the mud and mire of humanity even as Edwards casts his gaze heavenward. It’s intimate, devotional, meditative — at times it almost sounds like a sort of spiritual cousin to Gregorian chant, a comparison I dare say Edwards would be okay with.

The irony, of course, is that, as harrowing as this music can be, it feels more sacred than what you’ll hear on a Christian label. This isn’t an album that’s meant to act as a musical extension of your youth group; this is music made by a man without shoes, for he knows he’s standing on holy ground. The pared-down intimacy of these recordings make this feel — even among Wovenhand recordings — like a series of confessions, encounters with the Divine, and while they aren’t always straightforwardly inspiring, they’re profoundly True. A theme of the album is violence as a means of grace, an idea Edwards shares with luminaries like Flannery O’Connor; but if the album is splattered with holy bloodshed, there is also a profound contentment in a song like “His Rest,” which seeks the face of mercy behind the hand of might.

Ironically, the darkest and most unsettling Wovenhand record is also the one that loosens up Edwards the most. Freed from the burden of his fire-and-brimstone guitar grinding, he crafts one of his most driving and propulsive rock songs in the all-acoustic title track. He even does a cover song here — Joy Division’s “Truth,” done up as a sort of pseudo-gothic, quasi-dance number that might be kitschy in lesser hands, but is thoroughly reworked here in the same hypnotic folk style of the rest of the album. Elsewhere, Edwards proves himself to be a master of texture; a high flute solo helps “Terre Haute” to soar, while “Behind Your Breath” is a masterful build-up of guitar feedback, droning percussion, and a monk-like choir of backing voices. He also proves himself capable of saying much with very little — like the best minimalist music, opener “Sinking Hands” employs an alarmingly small number of chords and motifs to create something richly textured and hypnotic.

In a way, it’s like the casting of a spell. The whole album is like a slow-burning build-up with major pay-off, seducing the listener slowly with an invitation to meditate, to pray, to feel and think. Which makes it, of course, a record that requires a bit of work, but also a record that turns out to be the perfect environment for Edwards’ songwriting: It respects the intelligence of the listener and the conviction of the artist, but much more importantly, it respects the loftiness of the subject matter. You may find yourself wishing to remove your shoes, too. The Threshing Floor is, to quote on of its songs, a holy measure, never easy but unerring in its quest for something sacred and true.

Tagged as: Colorado, Folk/rock

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