Woods Of Ypres – Woods 4: The Green Album
Arpeggiated minor chords rise and fall, slow but well paced, ponderous and pulling along which are shortly joined with ethereal but hollow strings and a voice that brings weight but is barely singing. A love song after the love, a breakup in which the participants are broken.
Whole people who only leave the shards of love. And this is how we start, on a theme of human misery. The feelings of depression and longing that is all too familiar to all too many of us.
Woods 4: The Green Album by WOODS OF YPRES is my album pick for this month. Whilst the theme of relationship issues runs thick throughout it, the elements concerning the ends of other things is what concerns me here. All too often have I felt that Everything I Touch Turns To Gold (Then Too Coal), felt that I need to pen a letter in which I am already deceased,
All to often I need the push to
Drag that fuckin’ weight man,
Drag that weight and breathe
Pull that fuckin’ anchor across the rocks, push that mountain into the sea
Drag that Weight! Over Foreign Landscapes! Drag that Weight!
Like a 10 ton stone statue, standing before miles of mountains
And in those moments, I need the reminder that I am not the first to tread that ground. I am not the first to feel that fear, that dread from which no joy can escape. That pain that no anesthesiologist can remedy is temporary, at least in severity.
There will be moments in which all will seem bleak and lost and in those moments I will stand in the ghosts of the memories of others, in the shades of memories of myself and know that I am not alone in this. I am not alone in thinking depression will eat me alive if I let it, but I am not the first to fight the terror and this album is a kindness, a gentle reminder.
Kindest regards everyone.
Words: Jacob McCrone
Find WOODS OF YPRES on Facebook.
