Woven Hand
Mosaic

Born from a rib of the already famous and acclaimed 16 Horsepower, Woven Hand has been a sort of personal and alternative project of their leader and founder – David Eugene Edwards – since 2001. At a time when, apparently, 16 Horsepower no longer satisfied David Eugene’s creative needs. Joined by new musicians, he shifted and contaminated the original band’s sound with a more experimental and introspective approach.
The gothic American atmospheres that 16 Horsepower had already admirably expressed in beautiful albums like Secret South are, with Woven Hand, shrouded in a sinister aura and projected into a dimension not strictly bound to that Southern cultural and traditional context that had characterized Edwards’ early artistic phase.
The Woven Hand tracklists thus alternate the plucked and percussive sounds of banjos and the slightly nasal voices of Colorado storytellers with moments of deep buzzing and tightrope-walking vocals that seem to come from someplace else. A clear sign of the intent to embark on a wider path, certainly less tied to a geographical root.
Mosaic, released in June 2006, though considered a neofolk album, holds much more within. The band’s lineup sees Edwards always in charge of writing the songs, lead vocals, and string instruments, with an even more dominant role than in 16 Horsepower. This potential drive for centralization does not diminish the value of the work; in my view, it is one of the most fascinating things produced in the States in the very early 2000s.
The suspended, mysterious prologue of the opening (Breathing Bull) gives the listener the real sensory perception of finding themselves at dawn in a rustic landscape, amidst cold, damp mists, catching the dark silhouette of a bull sniffing the air. A powerful and evocative incipit that in just a few seconds introduces us to the majestic and relentless weaving of Winter Shaker. A song built with a mystical streak and a capacity for generating rhythm that is nothing short of mighty. Chiselled to the smallest sound, it is a more than eloquent calling card for everything Woven Hand has done in their history.
Next come moments that go back to winking at the so-called Southern tradition, but always in a minor key and thus with a melancholic aura that speaks of fatal destinies, of characters that seem to come out of a Faulkner novel (or of Nick Cave), shrouded in almost ghostly suggestions.
Whistling Girl and Deerskin Doll are the two most eloquent and memorable ballads in this sense. In contrast, the more difficult and reflective Twig and Ektooth, where the vocals remain in the foreground, floating above sounds that now have little of the Southern feel. Dirty Blue is perhaps the most famous track on the album, and its immediacy—thanks to the stunningly beautiful opening riff—masterfully mixes a certain traditional sound with sensations that recall the already mentioned Cave: a rolled snare, a rebellious violin, a refrain that avoids easy optimism.

C'è un dolore da desiderare
Essere il desiderio del dolore

Mosaic is an excellent album and, in my opinion, the most suitable to approach both Woven Hand and 16 Horsepower, as it contains the best writing and the best mental synthesis of David Eugene Edwards. A man endowed with a strong personality and—as one of his biographers put it—shaped by Christian influences that led him to reflect on themes such as pain, inner conflict, faith, and redemption. That pain and redemption are two basic reference points in the band’s output can be felt just by listening to the music and catching a few lines of the lyrics. The evocative power of the sound, the singing, and the atmospheres that arise around each song is the same one we perceive in a painting by Charles Marion Russell or George Caleb Bingham, if not in some independent western film.