(((O))) : Duke Garwood – Heavy Love

Mark Lanegan describes Duke Garwood as a mystic, and he’s probably not far off. As a musician, he finds his way around a tune in an effortless manner that suggests the path least trod is always going to be the most rewarding. As a stage presence, he is gnomic to the point of being almost utterly impenetrable, but with a curious warm charm to his otherworldliness. Combine the two and the result is a collection of live shows that tend not to stay still in the memory, as if the recollection has a life of its own. In short, he’s a very strange man making very strange music and the usual axiom that “well, you either get him or you don’t” doesn’t really apply to Duke, as he tends to exist in both of those statements at the same time.

With this new record however, it’s become an awful lot easier to share Duke’s musical visions although somewhat weirdly he manages to do this by being even more like Duke Garwood than ever before. It’s as though he’s created a focus to his work by being even more circuitous than usual, which has the overall effect of rendering any attempt to rationalise his music rather pointless, although this has the happy outcome of being a lot freer to just let it flow through you.

Anyone familiar with his live shows will be instantly at home with the guitar tones that begin Heavy Love with ‘Sometimes’, with a strange groove and almost oppressively reverbed sound that makes it feel as though this is being performed in the headiest of enclosed spaces. Even when the music’s at its brightest with ‘Burning Seas’, it’s music that roots the listener to the spot and almost forces rapt concentration to the careful, sparse layers and forceful whisper of the vocals. The “Heavy” part of the album’s title is very apt.

Come to think of it, so is the “Love” bit. It’s an undeniably sexy album, whether it’s the saucy duet (with Jehnny Beth from Savages) of the wonderfully-titled ‘Disco Lights’, the romantic gospel of ‘Sweet Wine’ or the (possibly literally) bone-shaking percussive sex magick and gloriously wobbly main riff of ‘Snake Man’, it’s an album that can be classified as Erotic Blues like nothing else.

It’s the title track that shines through the most. ‘Heavy Love’ combines the romantic, the sensual and the yearning that forms the backbone of the whole of the record and condenses it into one breathy, rain-soaked piece that shares a home with Nick Drake’s ‘At the Chime of a City Clock’ in terms of soul. Special mention should also be made of ‘Suppertime in Hell’, with its Hendrix-invoking chorus and deft footsteps through a more psychedelic version of the blues than elsewhere in this set.

Comparisons with the aforementioned Lanegan (co-producing here with Alain Johannes) are probably inevitable, and it does follow on extremely well from the duo’s Black Pudding collaboration as well as a spiritual flashback to Mark’s own Winding Sheet, particularly during ‘Honey in the Ear’. Vocally there seem to be some shared traits here and there but I would imagine that this is down to both artists influencing each other to the benefit of everyone.

Heavy Love as a first-listen experience is nothing short of astonishing, and repeated plays reap further rewards. It’s a rare occurrence when one listens to something that immediately clears its own space in the subconscious in a way to suggest that nothing’s going to shift it any time soon. If there are better records than this from anyone in the foreseeable future, then 2015’s going to be a very exciting year. If there is nothing that comes along to top it, then Heavy Love is a worthy champion.