Today, Ben Woods unveils his new bewitching single and video, ‘Wearing Divine’, the second release from his sophomore album Dispeller, out July 15th through Melted Ice Cream (NZ) / Shrimper (USA) / Meritorio (EU/UK).
Listen/Watch ‘Wearing Divine’ here
‘Wearing Divine’ channels 60’s bubblegum psychedelia in contrast with gritty lap steel guitar and machine sounds. This grit churns at the song’s core, dislodging and reframing its simple beauty.
Lucy Hunter (Opposite Sex) adds her spectral voice to the duet, and her and Woods take turns giving sections of their wavering spirits. “You want divine, if I can’t see you now with my own eyes, how am I going keep my faith this time – you want divine it’s when we die” Hunter sings, right before being swallowed up by Marlon Williams’ tape-mangled chorale.
Woods notes, “The song started as a nod to classic American singers like Brenda Lee and Patsy Cline. Allowing myself to reach for that level of desperation they get to through simple narratives. After bringing Lucy and Marlon in and layering it up, it started to push against that, in this woozy, dark kind of way. And it gave the song a whole different light — which I love.”
‘Wearing Divine’ is about martyring yourself for love; about falling down the rabbit hole. Woods, in both the lyrics and the music, resists giving only heady sweetness, which reminds us that romance can ride perilously close to madness. The listener feels the line between serenade and murder ballad blur and evade definition.
‘Wearing Divine’ is out now via all online streaming platforms.
BEN WOODS – Wearing Divine (Official Music Video)
Directed by Ben Woods & Julian Vares
Ben Woods ‘Dispeller’ Aotearoa Tour:
Thursday 1st September – Wellington – Meow
Friday 2nd September – Auckland – Whammy Bar
Friday 16th September – Dunedin – Dive
Saturday 17th September – Christchurch – Loons
Tickets on sale via Banished Music and Moshtix
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. Charlotte Forrester from Womb (Flying Nun) adds their diaphanous voice to ‘The Strip’ and ‘Punishing Type‘. On fragile duet ‘Wearing Divine’, Lucy Hunter (Opposite Sex / Wet Specimen) threatens to steal the limelight, before a full hive of Marlon Williams’ honeyed vibrato comes spluttering out of what sounds like a rusted can.
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 arrangements hit at the subtle, reactive instrumentation of late-era Fugazi, the glowing murk of Grouper, the Antipodean-gothic drudge of Tall Dwarfs, and the mechanical outer crust of Sparklehorse. However, while Woods experiments with the disparate and the disharmonious, it is the open heart that elevates Dispeller. His voice holds the physical and spiritual middle; flirting with, but never succumbing to the splendour and turmoil which surround it.
Dispeller out July 15th, 2022 on Melted Ice Cream (NZ) / Shrimper (USA) / Meritorio (EU/UK). Presave Dispeller / Preorder Dispeller
BEN WOODS – ‘Hovering At Home’
Directed by Ben Woods Cinematography by Martin Sagadin
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
For more information on Ben Woods visit:
