What we might call a late bloomer, Duke Garwood has been around the block a few times in a long career that stretches back to the early 90s, when he was the guitarist on The Orb’s 'Perpetual Dawn’ track in 1991. But it's only been in the last few years that he has established himself as a solo artist, releasing his debut album in 2005. Playing sax (Garwood is an accomplished multi-instrumentalist) on Savages’ Silence Yourself album, collaborations with Mark Lanegan on 2013's acclaimed Black Pudding album, and being specially invited to perform at last year's Brighton Festival have all helped to raise his profile in recent years.

Mark Lanegan has called Garwood a musical genius, while Josh T. Pearson says his songs are “as close to heaven as you can get with a guitar.” High praise indeed from two of the most respected neo-blues artists around.

Having escaped London for the relative tranquility of Hastings (an increasingly happening place for all you creatives) hasn't entailed Garwood chilling out exactly. He's an angry, if calmly spoken man, who makes what he calls “Beautiful apocalypse love music”. His previous album Heavy Love was an invariably sedate affair recorded in the desert, but this time around he’s recorded an album in his home studio and in Wales, the resulting work still being tranquil, and still containing his trademark subtle musical forebodings and eerie ambience. "It doesn't hide from reality, but it could hide the listener from it all for a while,” he claims.

It’s a claim well justified, with Garden of Ashes, for the most part, transporting (if you let it) the listener on its gentle waves and textures, a sound largely built upon deceptively simple fingerpicking, sparse drums, and occasional spooky backing vocals courtesy of the Smoke Fairies.

“Shoot me down and find the pieces that we all left behind, let us trade a tale of wrong and good, going back” he sings on lead track ‘Coldblooded’. It’s this one plus the final track, the reprise-like ‘Coldblooded The Return’, that represent the key moments on the album; a desert blues ambience permeating, arpeggioed, repetitive guitar, backing vocals (that recall some of the work on Nick Cave’s recent Skeleton Tree album) and brushed drum work evoking a mildly foreboding atmosphere. Soul brothers Paul May (drums) and Pete Marsh (bass) helped create the moods, the drums not separated, creating very much a ‘live’ feel, exemplified by the guitar amp hum heard at the beginning of ‘Sonny Boogie’.

In our recent interview Garwood says he is an angry man, in part derived from recent events such as Brexit and Trump, but that he uses this burning energy positively. Rather than make angry music, he thoroughly couches his mood with plenty of metaphors about growing and blooming – laying down some seeds – even if the process of rejuvenation will be painstakingly slow, and will require Herculean patience. “Roots may grow at my feet” he softly sings on the blissfully drowsy Velvet Underground vibes of ‘Heat Us Down’, reflecting the general theme of the album, one that Garwood says is about, “midnight in the garden of love. The garden of good and evil. The garden of paradise that we know is being destroyed to satisfy the greedy money people. It's all burned down. We burned it to ashes”.

And so to the task of re-building and rejuvenating, spraining forth from the album title, and the title-track itself, which is at first funereal, dark and depressing, before it ever-so-slowly struggles back into life, as it were, via the sprightly classical guitar work of Garwood. It’s a beautifully worked, spine-tingling highlight, the band gelling into one rumbling beast. Elsewhere, ’Blue’ has an elegantly melancholic late 60s rock classicism, and the sparse acoustica ‘Sing To The Sky’ is also a hymn to growth and re-awakening: “In this dusty shade, well the flowers they are slow to bloom, softly they sing to the sky. In this half light the souls they are slow to bloom, softly they sing to the sky”. Meanwhile ‘Days Gone Old’ meanders along a sub desert-blues riff, almost tripping over its haunting gentleness, and ‘Sleep’ is just him and an acoustic, on this peaceful alt-lullaby.

There’s a heightened meditative quality to almost everything on offer here, Harwood’s guitar work in particular riding subtly complex if repetitive lines. While this requires the listener to seriously indulge the artist (or to simply use it as background music), the rewards are worth it even if you might pine for the odd musical twist and turn. But Garwood isn’t interested in that. He believes that calmness in the face of the metaphorical apocalypse is what the doctor should prescribe. Like a Buddhist gently palming off stress and anxiety, in times of strife, one must stay positive and spiritual.
Jeff Hemmings

Website: dukegarwood.co.uk
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