I find myself attracted, at times, to less than pretty sounding vocalists telling less than pretty stories in song.
On Grace & Dignity from The Golden Dregs, released on 4AD in February, finds Benjamin Woods singing about home. From the liner notes:
For the On Grace & Dignity artwork, he’s commissioned Bristol-based model-maker Edie Lawrence to construct an HO-scale fictional Cornish town. Christened Polgras, the 8ft by 4ft model features a viaduct, an estuary, a supermarket, new-build houses and industrial buildings; every song from On Grace & Dignity is represented by a scene in the town. “There’s different parts of the experience of growing up in Cornwall in there,” he says. “Some of it was from me looking at it when I was down there that winter, and some of it was me harking back to the experience of growing up there. It’s defined by that sense of duality, of coexisting realities,”he explains. “You’re geographically so far away, and it has a strong identity of its own, as well as a different landscape. It’s so rugged and bleak, but beautiful – which is what I really like in music.”
I’m reminded, by his words and the sounds and pace of Dignity, of my own childhood with its brushes with bleakness in relatives trailer park homes amid the anger, dust, cigarette smoke, boiling meat, and booze.
“Philosophy teaches how man thinks he thinks; but drinking shows how he really thinks.” Rene Daumal, A Night of Serious Drinking
The more I listen, the cosier I get within the bleak beauty of On Grace & Dignity.
