The Golden Dregs – Hope is for the Hopeless
The Golden Dregs - Hope is for the Hopeless
(Funnel Music Ltd.)
Release Date: Out Now
Benjamin Woods has a bit of a
cult status in Cornwall due to his membership of various bands and working his
production magic with others but I think his current persona, the Golden Dregs,
finds him at his very best. Be warned, however, new album ‘Hope is for the
Hopeless’ is not a party album unless your party is at the Bang Bang Bar in
Twin Peaks. We get underway with the understated cowboy swagger of ‘Back Down
the Mountain’, complete with chinking spurs, before ‘Congratulations’ picks the
pace up without losing any of the lo-fi charm or charity shop suave. ‘The
Thirst of May’ has a slinking, Velvet Underground guitar line and Woods’ deep
vocal singing “do you really want to waste your life? Well I think you’d make a
good ex-wife” with deadpan cool.
The organ that heralds ‘Death of
a Salesman’ is the stuff of gospel choirs but the tune that follows has a sense
of mid-west slow-life that would have BBC 6Music falling over themselves if
Woods was a true-blue Yanky. ‘Nobody Ever Got Rich (by Making People Sad)’ is
simultaneously vast and sprawling as well as introverted and reclusive – as if U2
and Johnny Cash teamed up on a track produced by Badly Drawn Boy and Eels (now
who wouldn’t want to be in that studio?). The emerging melody of ‘The
Queen of Clubs’ is like a siren song from the depths of a tropical jungle, full
of heat, confusion and sexuality in the humidity of the tumbling notes. By
contrast, however, ‘Pathos’ is a more straightforward and accessible lament
that brings the likes of Nick Cave and Evan Dando to mind in vibe and vocal performance.
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| AKA Benjamin Woods |
The Golden Dregs’ sound is so
effortlessly cool, largely because it’s not trying to be cool, but that all
switches around on ‘Just Another Rock’ with a nifty little electro melody
giving the low slung guitar notes and shuffling beat the kind of geek-chic the
Jarvis Cocker made a career out of. ‘Clarksdale, MS’ is the kind of song you
want to leave home to – full of hastily wiped away tears and raindrops snaking
their way down car windows as everything you’ve ever known slowly shrinks in
the rear-view mirror. As is Woods’ way, however, the mood doesn’t stay too low
for too long as the sleepily romantic ‘Nancy and Lee’ soon pops up with a
skittish guitar rhythm and mournful cello to put an arm around your shoulder
and take you to the nearest pub.
Controversially, the title track
of the album is saved for last and ‘Hope is for the Hopeless’ finds the Golden
Dregs doing the best Leonard Cohen you’ll hear this year like some sort of
doomed lullaby for an even more doomed soul. The Golden Dregs may only be with
us for a while, a short time, but this is about quality rather than quantity and
you’ll be hard pushed to find an album containing more quality, substance and
style than this one, wherever you look right now.
More information: https://www.facebook.com/thegoldendregsmusic/
Live Dates:
18th October – St James Concert & Assembly
Hall, Guernsey
11th November – The Crofters Rights, Bristol
12th November – The Fish Factory, Penryn
14th November – The Rose Hill, Brighton
15th November – Port Mahon, Oxford
18th November – The Castle Hotel, Manchester
20th November – Mono Café Bar, Glasgow
21st November – Cobalt Studios CIC, Newcastle
upon Tyne