[indie-folk, indie-rock] (2025) The Golden Dregs - Godspeed [FLAC...

    The Golden Dregs – Godspeed (2025)

Review:
“When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life,” the 18th-century English writer Samuel Johnson quipped. The Golden Dregs’ fourth album, Godspeed, is a paean to London, specifically to the people who make up the city, whose existence is its pulse, and whose stories, whether good or bad, reflect the city. In other words, Godspeed is a blessing, a blessing for the denizens of London. This is the second Golden Dregs album to fore- ground a city — On Grace & Dignity (2023), their first and last record released by the British label 4AD, is in part a condemnation of gentrification in Cornwall, as locals found themselves priced out by wealthy individuals buying holiday homes. Godspeed tells the story of ordinary people experiencing ordinary moments in London. It’s like Raymond Carver meets Michael Bracewell, narrated by Tom Waits. Put differently, the all-seeing eye of Ben Woods, the frontman and lyricist of the Golden Dregs, returns with his bleak observations, leaving nothing unscrutinized, from which he concludes: nothing is certain in this world, except for our humanity. Godspeed does not follow one narrator from start to finish, nor is it linear. Instead, it showcases an array of characters, all of whom are, in one way or another, united by woe: lives beset with frustration and doubt, loneliness, and heartbreak. It brings to mind Craig Finn‘s trilogy, Faith in the Future (2015), We All Want the Same Things (2017), and I Need a New War (2019), which are about, in the Minnesotan songwriter’s own words, “unremarkable people”. However, these characters on Godspeed lack definition and speak in fragmented sentences, where, for the most part, nothing, not even love, can sustain them. The Golden Dregs have released their most fully realized album to date with Godspeed; it has been coming for some time, though. Starting as a solo endeavor by Woods, the Golden Dregs released their first album, Lafayette, in 2018. This was followed by Hope Is for the Hopeless the following year, which was a step up and where you first get a sense of Woods’ talent. Since 2019, the Golden Dregs have been a six-member ensemble, consisting of Issie Armstrong (guitar, backing vocals), Mike Clark (guitar), Matt Merriman (drums), Ted Mair (piano and bass), and Davy Roderick (synthesizer). “Big Ideas”, the opening song, starts surprisingly (for the Golden Dregs) with an acoustic guitar evoking early 1970s Laurel Canyon folk before the onslaught of shimmering synths and bass, bringing the listener to a sound more familiarly associated with the band. The synthpop “Linoleum” is infectious, and with a sweeping chorus, it is perhaps Golden Dregs’ biggest melody to date. The Golden Dregs – Big Ideas “Linoleum” captures the motif of the record: strangers, and how, despite this, we all share a common bond. Conversely, the next track, “The Company of Strangers”, delineates the adverse effect of being surrounded by strangers when they are the people you work with, socialize with, and, if you are truly unlucky, find yourself in a relationship with. What immediately strikes you about the Golden Dregs is Woods’ voice, a growling baritone that is somewhere between Matt Berninger and Samuel T. Herring of Future Islands. It is a melancholic croon, which gives you the impression of a stranger telling his life story to you over a few pints in a pub, though you don’t know if he is making it up, and you don’t care. It’s a story, and stories are all we have, factual or fictional. The bouncy “Imagining France”, with its plinky synths, demonstrates what the Golden Dregs try—and do—achieve on Godspeed: an album replete with instant hooks while retaining their core sensibility. Meanwhile, “Weight of It All” is sung by Issie Armstrong, which showcases the band again mixing things up; it has a spooky refrain, complete with a stabbing horn and baleful synths. Around this point, Godspeed drops off slightly, not in terms of quality but pacing. There are three slower tracks in succession, starting with “Erasure”, which could have been taken directly from Tom Waits’ Mule Variations (1999), featuring a narrator contemplating the passage of time. Woods is pessimistic; he titled an album “Hope Is for the Hopeless”, after all. Nevertheless, he leverages this darkness with a droll humor comparable to Leonard Cohen, which is to say, a bleak self-dramatization. Like Cohen, Woods can deliver a line that can make you cry, either from its profundity or humor, or the profound realization that humor is the only thing getting you through the day. In the ballad “Heron”, the narrator asks, “If you had the chance / Would you be forgotten?” as he drinks alone. Later, perhaps after a few more drinks, he concludes, “Where the old dog goes to die / I’ll be living my best life”. Therefore, Woods ends the song on this zeitgeist’s anodyne catchphrase—living my best life—and turns it into an ironic statement on misguided self-interest over community. Although his observations fall into the political sphere, Woods isn’t strictly a political writer—not in the traditional sense, and certainly not in a way that comes across as glib—but with a heart for social justice. Despite the dreary tone, there are moments of levity and faith on Godspeed. Its overall message is that the problems you face, someone else faces too. The penultimate song, “The Wave”, is an uptempo number featuring a cello that continues to build until the end. The whole track sounds like a mix of the Velvet Underground and Arcade Fire. While “Godspeed”, with its muffled drum beat and sparse piano notes, follows a narrator who, in a Jarvis Cocker-esque piece of wry social commentary, comically bids godspeed to a subject at the daylight saving celebration vanity fair (party). Godspeed is a reminder that you are not alone in your struggle. If anything, humanity is most connected by our hardships. As the metaphysical, English poet John Donne wrote, “No man is an island.” — PopMatters

Track List:
01 - Big Ideas
02 - Linoleum
03 - The Company of Strangers
04 - Imagining France
05 - Weight Of It All
06 - Erasure
07 - In The Headlights He
08 - Heron
09 - Perfume
10 - If You'd Seen Him
11 - The Wave
12 - Godspeed


Media Report:
Genre: indie-folk, indie-rock
Origin: London, UK
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)


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