At the 16 Horsepower house sometime last year the decision was made to take a break and mastermind, singer and songwriter David Eugene Edwards spontaneously made use of this for a solo outing. Artists like him always have a handful of songs they don't want to inset in a band album.

Besides this solo project, entitled Woven Hand, is of course not terribly far away from 16 Horsepower, it has everything that distinguishes the main band, only the hastiness is missing for the most part. Where once he stressed his message as if the horsemen of the apocalypse were close upon his heels, now on "Woven Hand" he packages his lyrics, pregnant with biblical symbolism, in dark atmospheric ballads, which can be placed besides Mark Lanegan and the latest Nick Cave album, stylistically and qualitatively.

The songs have more room to breathe, there's more filigree, more refinement, without being lightweighted. The glorious darkness, the magic, the love of traditional music (not only American), it is all omnipresent here.

To single out particular track is difficult. "Blue Pail Fever" will probably stick in the auditory canal first because of the nearly brilliant refrain, in "Wooden Brother" the banjo meets Shadows´ guitars, Bill Withers´ "Ain´t No Sunshine" is abducted to the empire of darkness (and is lightyears more intensive than the version of Mark Eitzel which is released synchronous), in the piano-based ballad "Stories And Pictures" he simultaneously sounds like Leonard Cohen and Jeffrey Lee Pierce, "Your Russia" is like the singing of minstrels from the towers of hell, atmospheric keyboard sounds ordain "The Good Hand", "Your Russia" with its manic intensity could have easily been on the latest 16 HP-Album. Etcetera.

"Woven Hand" certainly isn't an record that scrapes the bottom of the barrel or an in-between album, but a 10-track-unit without fillers, a great album from start to finish, that will please some people even more than his work with his main band.