Venue: Teatar & TD, Zagreb, Croatia
Concert date: 04.06.2007
Attendance: 250
Ticket price: 60/80 KUN
Woven Hand have become a proper rock band, and if anyone could have seen that coming a few years ago at Ljubljana’s Cankarjev dom, where David Eugene Edwards played with a very different lineup from the current one, it sure wasn’t obvious then. Today it’s pretty much standard practice.
From the original live lineup only the phenomenal percussionist Ordy Garrison is left. Back then he played in a way that you’d need at least three legs to keep up with his rhythm. This time, instead of that complex, unconventional playing, he replaced it all with such impulsiveness that arrhythmia was never more than a step away. In places it’s a shame that not every detail gets the spotlight anymore, all those things David Eugene so masterfully weaves into his studio creations. On the albums, his boundless musicality really shines in full, because David Eugene is nowhere near limiting himself to just the guitar, which is rarely in standard tuning anyway, and the mandolin, which is what he’s been doing lately at shows. Quite the opposite. In the studio he reaches for really everything within arm’s reach: all sorts of plucked, bowed and percussive instruments that sound far more Native American in his hands than you’d think possible, then a bandoneon or concertina and assorted artificial sounds. And not so long ago, a big chunk of all that could be heard live too. But times change, and the evolution happened naturally.
Let’s not forget that Woven Hand began as David’s own “child”, born out of a need to create when things weren’t going to plan in his band at the time, 16 Horsepower. It was a project that outgrew every expectation, and David Eugene simply doesn’t want to do everything on his own anymore. Ordy Garrison, mentioned above, joined early on, and Daniel McMahon accompanied them on piano or organ right from the start, playing on the first album, Woven Hand (2002). With every new album David Eugene dug deeper into the musical sphere and his music got darker and darker, and he felt he needed more sound at the shows too. That’s how we got today’s quartet: David Eugene Edwards on guitar and vocals, Ordy Garrison on drums, Peter van Laerhoven on the second guitar, and Pascal Humbert himself taking the bass spot.
But even though Woven Hand sound a lot more rock-oriented at their shows lately, they’re still a chapter all their own. And that was obvious this night too, when they brought the word of God with the devil’s mouth to Zagreb’s Teatar & TD. And where better to start than at the beginning and end at the end? “Winter Shaker” and “Dirty Blue”, the opener and the closer of the night, with ten other songs in between, the kind that had some people dragging their own or borrowed boats up the nearby hills during that hour and a half, waiting for the universal flood.
One of David Eugene’s best qualities, whether it’s a purely solo show, the Armageddon-like playing of 16 Horsepower, or uncovering the dark dimensions of sinful souls with Woven Hand, is that he surrenders to the music in a truly cathartic way, as if tomorrow were never going to come. If all he can give at a given moment is a blade of grass, he’ll give it without a second thought; if he can give the whole earthly and unearthly kingdom, he’ll give that too. There’s no doubt about it. Ever.
He still sits on his chair through the entire show, even though at times it seems like some kind of energy possessing him would love to hurl him somewhere. And he still sings through two microphones, a regular one and a cardioid one, which stretches his range of vocal dynamics even further. His hollow-body electric guitar sound is also largely propped up by an almost constant tremolo, which gives him a very specific and recognizable playing style. Peter’s guitar seems to move in a completely different musical environment, and although he rarely takes the lead melody, he’s indispensable. Together with David he creates soundscapes with windy echoes, in which Pascal’s bass either grounds the whole thing or, like an earthquake or a landslide, turns it into a brand-new world where the lyrical images come alive as if in some Bosch painting. Meanwhile the jerky drums keep showing what the genesis of the world looked like, or maybe even better, what its end will be.
As expected, the material leaned toward the last two albums, Consider The Birds (2004) and Mosaic (2006), with the emphasis on the latter. From the first two they played just two songs, one from each, or you could say both from Blush Music (2003), since “Your Russia” appears on both, in two quite different versions. Here they played a third one, because the resemblance to the studio versions was only in the broad outline. The heart was the same at best, but the body was completely different. All the other songs got a similar escape from the standard uniform, mostly recognizable only by some tiny musical motif that gave them away, and even that only occasionally and quite randomly. Maybe, just maybe, you could pick out a song a little sooner from fragments of the lyrics, which were also heavily altered and sung in a completely different form from the one we know from the albums. The whole thing felt very “here and now”, as if the forms these songs grew from were only a fleeting, really pale memory of something that maybe never existed anywhere other than in a dream. And even those dreams were feverish.
Quite a few songs started with a sort of intro made up of some other song that only hinted at itself. Usually those first few minutes belonged to David alone, reciting them in a “seemingly” entranced state, like a mantra or a prep for a Native American war dance, which fit right in with the lyrics of “Horse Head Fiddle”, the first of two 16 Horsepower tunes. “Hang my skull on the old larch tree, carve from its wood a two string fiddle. Cover over with the skin of my face, string my hair down the neck in place”. The whole band comes in, slowly, more like thunder than anything human, but they don’t continue the theme they started; instead they launch into “White Bird”. Later David starts another downright spooky motif, “there’s a wolf in the piano, on the white keys. Teeth on the black. Dry bones under animal skin am I. No tears from this eye”, which never fully turns into the song “Into The Piano” as it promises, but mutates like an anomaly into something else entirely, the aforementioned “Your Russia”. And that marks the end of the official part.
But it only marks it, because David soon returns. Completely alone. From the dimly lit stage you can still make out a gesture that tells the heated crowd something like “it’s okay, that’s enough. I’m here. Quiet, please”. From the few instruments lying to the side he picks the mandolin. And already the melody… Surely the most famous melody of the night. A melody that could wake the dead. But it’s not only about the song, it’s about the whole cult that built up around 16 Horsepower and some of their “evergreen” tracks. “Black Soul Choir” is definitely one of them, and that’s exactly what was played. Though barely audible, over the roaring hall.
It wouldn’t be fair if it stayed unchanged, since after all you never step into the same river twice. In the chorus you could hear a slight change: the male liar from “every man is evil yes an every man a liar” was replaced by a female figure, “every man is evil yes an every girl a liar”. And it was sung in a downright troubadour manner; for a few moments David Eugene became a true messiah.
Meanwhile the other three came back too, obviously thrilled with the loud crowd. Without much hesitation they let the last song carry them away, “This fear is only the begining, all for the loving hand. Yes I smile and I agree it is a good night to shiver”. “Dirty Blue” in all its glory. And it’s lovely to see all four of them, visibly in good spirits, doing what they do best. And it’s lovely to see David and Pascal on the same stage. In the same band. Together they confirmed once more that Woven Hand are not just another one of many, but that they truly hold a very special place in the pantheon of musical art.
Setlist
Winter Shaker
Speaking Hands
Elktooth
Truly Golden
Deerskin Doll
Whistling Girl
(Horse Head Fiddle)/ White Bird
(Down In Yon Forest)/ Tin Finger
Swedish Purse
(Wolf In The Piano)/ Your Russia
———-encore—————-
Black Soul Choir
Dirty Blue
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