Ben Woods comfortably leans into intuition and abstraction on his beguiling new album, Dispeller, out July 15th through Shrimper / Melted Ice Cream / Meritorio.
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The album’s first single/video, ‘Hovering at Home’ is available today.
Says Woods of the video, “’Hovering at Home’ is about the magical world we hold onto in hermitude. Initially, I thought it was about hiding, but as we carried on building the song, I came to realise it was more about finding points of connection between that inner world and the outside. The video is a retelling of a paranormal experience I shared with my cousin as a child. One night we were visited by an inhuman entity dancing at the window. Initially, I was frightened of its thin gyrations but have come to think of it as a fond memory. Tom Tuke (the puppeteer) and I spent days trawling through the markets and charity shops of Auckland before Martin flew up to join us. We worked at a small studio that was built into a desolate train stop. We built hillsides from Chinese winter melons, and devils out of fish guts and bones. Stashed away with Tom and Martin, carefully building this surreal universe, felt like the right way to serve the spirit of the song.”
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On Dispeller, Woods’ intimate experiments in rock paint a vivid portrait. Here, the New Zealand artist leans comfortably into intuition and abstraction. Expansive arrangements are anchored by heavy-lidded prose, while carrying the air of the portside shack it was made in.
Dispeller was recorded throughout a year in Woods’ hometown, Lyttelton, with Ben Edwards (Aldous Harding, Marlon Williams, Julia Jacklin) at the helm of the mixing console and co-producing. Utterings, footsteps, and the rattles of the room linger beneath the album’s dense instrumentation, alluding to the familiar space the songs were captured in. Here, Woods’ songs breathe and flourish into their own worlds. “I found my voice in trying to make atonality croon,” he says. “With Dispeller it was less about harmony — the blend was capturing the songs very honestly in the room, and still making each of them to transport you somewhere different.”
Even beside Woods’ acclaimed debut, PUT (2019), which saw him sharing stages with Aldous Harding, No Age, Julia Jacklin and, Steve Gunn, Dispeller enchants. The songs here are stronger, the instrumentation stranger. ‘Hovering At Home’ features mangled tape machine interjections and manipulated sax. Clusters of unsettling piano tip ‘Teething’ toward the surreal. With chopped and screwed vocal contributions from underground hero Alastair Galbraith, ‘Speaking Belt’ snaps and pulses with the sordid clatter of a lost Xpressway single. Charlot
Woods’ melodies bring to mind Scott Walker’s dramatic tunefulness, while his voice holds something of Gordon Gano’s waver, pushed through New Zealand vowel mangling. Dispeller’s
Dispeller Tracklisting:
1. Fame
2. Trace Reel
3. The Strip
4. Teething
5. Speaking Belt
6. Hovering At Home
7. Wearing Divine
8. Punishing Type
10. White Leather Again
Presave Dispeller / Preorder Dispeller
Dispeller out July 15th, 2022 on Melted Ice Cream (NZ) / Shrimper (USA) / Meritorio (EU/UK).
