the GOLDEN DREGS share final single ‘Vista’ from new album

Today, Cornish musician Benjamin Woods shares ‘Vista’, the final GOLDEN DREGS single from his forthcoming record, On Grace & Dignity. Inspired by the Graham Green short story The Destructors, Woods blithely surveys the wanton abandon and recklessness of teenage boys burning down a house, “for no reason than to see the burning world.” Finely tuned with filigrees of guitar and skipping bass, ‘Vista’ echoes the nostalgia for his own childhood experiences as a curious teenager living in a place where very little goes on.

‘Vista’ follows the singles ‘Before We Fell From Grace’‘American Airlines’ and ‘Sundown Lake’, which all feature on the GOLDEN DREGS album, On Grace & Dignity, out this Friday 10 February. Woods’ third album considers his home and what it means to be shaped by a place – in this instance, Truro, Cornwall’s capital. In among the personal reflections on loss of innocence and inferiority and inspired by authors Raymond Carver, Lydia Davis and Richard Hugo, Woods spins subtly interweaving narratives about survival, desperate acts of violence, loss and the limitations of  community in the face of rapacious gentrification. It unfurls at a graceful pace, grounded by Woods’ rich baritone voice which seems to resonate from his feet. For the album’s visuals, Woods commissioned Bristol-based model-maker Edie Lawrence to construct an HO-scale fictional Cornish village. Christened Polgras, the 9 ft by 4 ft diorama 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 village.