Wooden Wand - Wither Thou Goest, Cretin

This is my introduction to this bloke so i have no idea how this relates to previous work of which there seems to be rather a lot. I hear that he's about to put a record out on Young God which kind of makes sense as he has the same strange dark singer songwriterly thing going on as a lot of the artists on that label. The first two tracks are churning guitar and vocals things before the whole thing goes a bit more jaunty. It is more affecting I think when more stripped bare and luckily most of the tracks have this feel. These are anguished songs that seem to come from a line of songwriters that include Nick Cave, Michael Gira, Smog, Johnny Cash, 'Nebraska' era Bruce Springsteen and anyone who has moaned low over back porch acoustic guitar pickings. At its best it recalls the eerie late night tales of the afore mentioned 'Nebraska' where notes are sparse and vocals are yearning, gritty and severely depressed. He doesn't look too happy on the cover either, possibly as he appears to have flowers growing out of his groin. This is limited to 300 and is a re-issue of an album previously released on a CDr on a block of wood.