It comes in handy in the record store that they pasted on a sticker that says it explicitly, but you only need to hear the first few seconds of the Woven Hand album, and you know exactly who you're dealing with. The name of the song is The Good Hand. At first there's that resounding organ. One single chord, which is soon flooded by a twinkling wave of mandolin and guitar. And then there's that voice which sings: 'I am nothin' without/His ghost within/And all you wooden eyes cannot see/the good hand upon me'.

Perhaps these lyrics should be sung jubilantly, but the vocal chords of this man creak and moan. The hand of the Lord is a beautiful thing, but it also weighs heavy upon him with all the wrath of a revenging God. Hear him groan.

This can only be one man: this is David Eugene Edwards. Since their debut in 1996, the minister's grandson from Denver, Colorado made three magnificent studio-albums and one live album with his foursome Sixteen Horsepower. Full of driving rhythms and dark folk melodies which mercilessly hurl you back in time a couple of centuries, while Edwards poured his poetic hell and damnation sermons over you. The archetypal voice of the rigidly orthodox Protestant church. But infernally beautiful.

When the other Horsepower members took a sabbatical year after Hoarse (2001), Edwards plunged into the studio to make this disguised solo album. In the sweat of thy brow, so to speak. And with his hands folded.

The result is impressive. The ten tracks, on which he plays most instruments himself and sometimes is accompanied minimally by Stephen Taylor on electric guitar and Daniel McMahon on keyboards, don't deviate much from his well-known, gravelled paths, heavy as lead, but in this desolate musical landscape his unearthly lamentations hit home even harder. The driven Glass Eye for instance, or the almost medieval Arrowhead. Even that one "secular" cover, Ain't No Sunshine (When She's Gone), never sounded as stifling and tormented then in his rendition.

A Lord that chastises David Eugene Edwards for this purpose is worth praising.

4 stars (out of 5)