The Whiskey Priest - Lost Wages

The Whiskey Priest - Brooding, atmospheric alt-folk wanderings are at the ever-shifting center of the songs from Austin's Seth Woods, aka The Whiskey Priest...new seven-track project touches ambient noise, the occasional electro-beat, layers of reverbed folk and chiming electric guitar lines and Woods' own slightly raspy, rough-hewn vocals...follows up last year's well-received epic Wave and Cloud // Release: Lost Wages (November 8, Rainboot) // Sounds like: the psych-folk soundtrack to a deserted desert highway at 2am, acoustic mood pieces held together lightly by the slightest hint of warm, drifting melody...layers of extended instrumental passages merge with starkly etched, haunting songs coaxed from what his bio refers to as "exorcised demons, alienation and bewilderment"...

Quote: "I wish I could write a real good traditional narrative type song...but I tend to write more abstractly. I think writing that way still tells a story, but a more open-ended one. I discovered a few years ago that when I listened to bands like Talking Heads, Wilco, Guided By Voices - often the stories of the songs didn't make sense to my head right away, but my heart understood what was being conveyed. so I mostly try to write like that." // What we like: there's an odd and unexpected spiritual depth to Woods' approach, drawn from a highly literate background (he rattles off a list of philosophers and writers as key influences) and projected through a broken lens of eerie, folk-driven explorations...closing number "The Wages of Sin" is a scarily effective and affecting song of awesome power held in a loosely gripped kid glove...the six-minute minimalist "Ballad of the Whiskey Priest" quietly crawls beneath the skin like a cold shudder, slowly building layer upon hypnotic layer of droning notes, beats, piano, guitar lines and Woods' simple vocal melody -- "Amazing Grace" re-written as a sweat-soaked peyote dream...

The Whiskey Priest - "The Wages of Sin" (from Lost Wages)

The Whiskey Priest - "The Ballad of The Whiskey Priest" (from Lost Wages)

Stream the full Lost Wages album here...