S A R G E N T H O U S E

Long-time devotees may still favour the sparse, acoustic fervour of earlier Wovenhand records, but it’s undeniable that David Eugene Edwards’ band have benefited hugely from becoming noisier and more muscular in recent times. 2014’s Refractory Obdurate was almost universally acclaimed…

Wovenhand’s new album Star Treatment is officially out today in stores, streaming, and digital platforms. See some of the rave reviews already coming in below.

Wovenhand begin their European tour on Monday, September 12th and will be joined by Emma Ruth Rundle on most shows. Tickets are available HERE, with a full list of dates below.

WOVENHAND & EMMA RUTH RUNDLE LIVE 2016

Sep 12   COLOGNE, DE – Gebäude 9
Sep 13   FRANKFURT, DE – Zoom
Sep 15   BERN, CH – ISC
Sep 16   ZURICH, CH – Bogen F
Sep 17   VIENNA, AT – Flex
Sep 18   BUDAPEST, HU – A38
Sep 20   SALZBURG, AT – Rockhouse
Sep 21   MUNICH, DE – Ampere
Sep 22   LEIPZIG, DE – UT Connewitz
Sep 23   BERLIN, DE – Heimathafen
Sep 24   HAMBURG, DE – Reeperbahn Festival *
Sep 26   ARHUS, DK – Train
Sep 27   OSLO, NO – John Dee
Sep 29   HELSINKI, FI – Tavastia *
Sep 30   STOCKHOLM, SE – Nalen
Oct 01    LUND, SE – Mejeriet
Oct 02    COPENHAGEN, DK – Vega Jr.
Oct 04    EINDHOVEN, NL – Effenaar
Oct 05    AMSTERDAM, NL – Melkweg
Oct 06    LEUVEN, BE – Het Depot
Oct 07    GENT, BE – Handelsbeurs
Oct 08    CHARLEROI, BE – L’Eden
Oct 10    LILLE, FR – L’Aéronef
Oct 11    PARIS, FR – La Maroquinerie
Oct 13    ORLEANS, FR – L’Astrolabe
Oct 14    GRENOBLE, FR – La Belle Electrique
Oct 15    FEYZIN, FR – L’Epicerie Moderne
Oct 16    TOULOUSE, FR – La Rex
Oct 18    LONDON, UK – The Dome

* Wovenhand only

“Edwards belongs to an older breed. He’s in there with Cave, Michael Gira, Carla Bozulich, Dan Higgs, Polly Jean Harvey, David Tibet. He’s a mystic wanderer, the type who seeks transcendence in darkness as well as in light. He never hides his voice. It’s a huge, barreling wail, a declamatory roar. And the music matches the majesty of that voice, calling on traditions that can sometimes go past ancestral country music and into tribal-chant territory. This is big music, a type of music that we don’t often hear anymore. It’s music for calling down heaven. There is plenty of great music coming out these days, but very little of it is concerned with summoning spirits in that same way. We don’t get many albums like this anymore.” - Stereogum, Album of the Week

"Beyond the admirable sincerity and devotion, the record is full of emotive hooks, thundering percussion, psychedelic twang, ethnic rhythms, and formless meditations on what mysteries reside in the heavens above. Edwards’ musical palette has truly become limitless, and Star Treatment takes Wovenhand’s sound to its most realized and accomplished.” - Noisey

“Star Treatment is actually a damn fine album. It's catchy, it's gritty, and it just feels like a rock n' roll album should.” - Metal Injection
 

On Friday, Nick Cave and his Bad Seeds will release their new album Skeleton Tree, and other than the soul-wrecking first single “Jesus Alone,” I haven’t heard it yet. Nobody has. Cave’s label has sent out no advances, which means music critics like me are tingling with anticipation just like everybody else. This is Cave’s first album since his son fell off a cliff and died last year. Cave is an artist with a long, storied history of staring deeply into the darkest parts of the human experience, of drinking that darkness in and spitting it back out all over us. The fact that he’s back to recording music so soon after such a life-reshaping personal catastrophe is a miraculous testament to his own strength. Even before hearing the album, I can feel the weight of its presence. It’s out there, waiting. And in a few days, it will be stomping all over my soul. But now, there is a chance, however slight, that Skeleton Tree will not be the best Nick Cave album that comes out on Friday.

I’m being glib here, of course. Star Treatment, the new Wovenhand album, is not a Nick Cave album. It’s not fair to Cave to imply that it is. It’s also not fair to David Eugene Edwards, the Denver musician who has been leading Wovenhand since 2001, since it was a side project of his mutant-country band 16 Horsepower. But Edwards has been treading some of the same territory as Cave for a long time now. His music deals in the same darkness, the same obsessiveness. His songs are steeped in the history of American music, of folk and country and blues, and yet they owe as much to some of the clanging, confrontational forms that followed: punk, metal, hardcore, noise-rock. His songs sound like incantations, like prayers bubbling up from below. He’s not Cave, but he’s cut from the same cloth.

David Eugene Edwards has been an exceptionally enigmatic figure since he first began to infuse country, Americana, and dark folk with an unparalleled intensity. What started with 16 Horsepower during the rising “Denver Sound” of the mid-90’s, took on a…

David Eugene Edwards has long brought a uniquely pallpable intensity to his alternative country songs. Even back when he fronted 16 Horsepower, his music was filled with a punishing air of travail and — eventually — redemption. Now as the…

by David Anthony

David Eugene Edwards isn’t afraid of shifting focus. For 15 years he’s operated under the Wovenhand moniker, a name that’s allowed him to make music that runs the gamut from folky Americana to dark, twisted rock ‘n’…

by Tom Breihan

Wovenhand, the Denver group led by the former 16 Horsepower frontman David Eugene Edwards, have developed their own take on American roots music — one that’s grand and dark and gothic, one that draws on doom…

Wovenhand will head back to Europe this September to play 29 cities in 12 different countries in support of his forthcoming new album entitled Star Treatment. The album is the follow-up to the critically acclaimed Refractory Obdurate now…

Wovenhand is recording their new album in the studio now. In the meantime, they have just announced that they will be playing Psycho Las Vegas, with many more shows to come. 

article and photos by Omar Kasrawi

And as if to set the stage for [Chelsea Wolfe]’s crushing sound, was Wovenhand. If Wolfe was casting spells to bring forth the darkness, Wovenhand’s David Eugene Edwards was tapping into the…

photo by Dan Long

The rainy late summer evening cast a suitably gloomy pall over last night’s proceedings, but the damp masses in Philly’s Underground Arts created a sorta human humidity that sapped the…