David Eugene Edwards - Hyacinth ((CD))

David Eugene Edwards has always been larger than life. His music with innovative heavy droning folk band Wovenhand, and before that the haunting revivification of high lonesome sound antique Americana of 16 Horsepower breathed a near apocalyptic sense of urgency and power into musical archetypes long abandoned in the latter-20th Century. On his first-ever solo album under his own name, Hyacinth, David Eugene Edwards delivers a sound uniquely his own, with a vulnerability and introspection unheard from him before. Stripping back the heavy rock of his recent work with Wovenhand, Hyacinth puts the mans voice, and sparing instrumentation into the main focus. Theres a somber beauty and world-weary tone throughout these songs. The album couldve been considered a slight return to the more melodic sounds of 16 Horsepowers Secret South (2000) and the first, self-titled Wovenhand album (2002). But theres more going on here: a rhythmic, pulsating undercurrent reminiscent of the tape loops and