The Golden Dregs

A powerful, frank, yet also beautiful song cycle...

Much of the rest of the country views Cornwall through a tourist lens. What we learn about the area is what is presented to us – that is to say, in a brochure. Winding roads. Gorgeous beaches. A place to get away from it all. What the GOLDEN DREGS present is the un-gilded truth, however; songs of working class life in the peripheries, ‘On Grace & Dignity’ is both beautiful and caustic, its unrelenting commitment to honesty both shocking and entrancing.

Songwriter Benjamin Woods roots his work in the experiences he knows best. Much of the material here was prompted by work as a labourer, shifts hauling dirt in exposed Cornish conditions. Vocally, his baritone recalls The Magnetic Fields, say, or Smog, or even the Silver Jews, but there’s little in the way of trans-Atlanticism about his hyper-specific songwriting. 

‘Before We Fell From Grace’ seems to speak of tension and release, the wait for his shift to end against the rare privilege of being able to enjoy his surroundings in complete freedom. ‘American Airlines’ speaks eloquently of loss, a vastly personal topic that also underpins album highlight ‘Eulogy’. ‘Vista’ meanwhile seems to revel in a moment of light and levity, Woods’ towering voice swapping its cavernous depths for a gleeful leap of faith.

Indeed, there’s much beauty at play here to counterweight the frequent darkness. The introduction is a sonic balm, while the frequent use of breathy woodwind – closer ‘Beyond Reasonable Doubt’ is a formidable example – recalls the near ambient work of Alabaster dePlume as wave upon wave of shimmering saxophone tumbles forth out of the speakers.

A powerfully affecting song cycle, ‘On Grace & Dignity’ peels back preconceptions, stabbing straight for the raw nerve. Amplifying the artistry and promise on 2019’s ‘Hope Is For The Hopeless’, the GOLDEN DREGS have produced something profound and remarkable.

Benjamin Woods, the multi-instrumental mastermind behind The Golden Dregs, spent the entirety of the pandemic shovelling shit on a lacklustre building site on the outskirts of Truro. Perhaps some would despairingly cry to mummy; in Woods’ case, his labours resulted in his third Dregs album, the astounding On Grace and Dignity, rich with lyrics like: “Building, buildings, buildings / And painted tarmac fields / Rows and rows of houses / Brick and mortar graves / Nothing ever happens” (‘How It Starts’). 

Although this record’s polemical crosshairs may not wholly focus on new, groundbreaking social themes, for those repeatedly perplexed by the restrictions inherent in dogmatic consumer/corporate culture, or for those unsatiated by false idealisations of a halcyon day rendered inaccessible, On Grace and Dignity might be made for you. Equally, for those who can’t stomach the gravelly voice of late Cohen or Cash, find joy in something a little downbeat, or require a bit of a genre-bender, you might be advised to look elsewhere for your album of the year. And to risk alienating the reader, if those reservations are a dealbreaker for you, then frankly, I want nothing to do with you. Sorry.

For me, On Grace and Dignity is a sensitively considered exploration of a very specific style which wonderfully expresses Benjamin Woods’ insular lockdown temperament. The combination of Phil Lesh sounding bass licks in ‘Josephine’, Roger McGuinn echoing riffs in ‘Vista’, and unconventional left to right panning across the record makes me wonder why the album displays all the signs of ’60s/’70s psychedelia whilst at the same time sounding absolutely nothing like it. On this record, Woods masters the ability to reference others without allowing them to become the sole identity of the music – a trap which many fall into. In On Grace and Dignity, we are left with a rich tapestry of allusions to those who trod a similar path, but in the end enough space is retained on the canvas for The Golden Dregs to develop fiercely in the future.

4AD has announced the signing of songwriter/producer Benjamin Woods and his project, the Golden Dregs, to the roster. To celebrate the news, Woods has shared a new song, “American Airlines,” as well as details of his 4AD album debut, On Grace & Dignity.

Hailing from Cornwall – a county in south-west England that draws thousands of tourists on holiday, and where thousands of locals could never hope of affording one – Woods grew up with a keen awareness of that gap between idealism and reality. the GOLDEN DREGS’ third album, On Grace & Dignity, out February 10th , considers his home and what it means to be shaped by a place – in this instance, Truro, Cornwall’s capital, home to a rare three-spired cathedral, a peaceful river and a lot of empty shops and flimsy out-of-town housing estates. Written, recorded and produced by Woods from his South London home and childhood bedroom in Truro, it was mixed by Ali Chant (Perfume Genius, Aldous Harding) who provided additional production.

Sharing a preview of On Grace & Dignity, “American Airlines” follows a man searching for “his best self” on holiday. “Life is often lived waiting for the holiday and not really enjoying the here and now,” Woods muses. “It seems a strange pattern that we have.” The track is accompanied by an official video by dinomoves.

On Grace & Dignity’s origins lie in winter 2020 when Woods lost his job in lockdown and moved back to his parents’ house. The only work he could get was as a labourer on a poorly run building site on the grimmest outskirts of Truro. “It was such a bleak winter – waist-deep in mud digging holes and rolling out turf on top of building waste, really grim stuff, which became the backdrop to the stories I was trying to write,” he adds, citing Raymond Carver, Lydia Davis and Richard Hugo as influences.

In among the personal reflections on loss of innocence and inferiority, Woods spins subtly interweaving narratives about survival, desperate acts of violence, loss and the limitations of community in the face of rapacious gentrification. Nevertheless, it is, appropriately for an album about home, somewhere you’ll want to spend a while. Life here proceeds at a
graceful pace grounded by Woods’s deep voice, which seems to resonate from his feet as he delivers the sort of meticulously written lunar wisdom worthy of Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner, or the tidy yet revelatory koans of Silver Jews’ David Berman.

For the On Grace & Dignity artwork, he’s commissioned Bristol-based model-maker Edie Lawrence to construct an HO-scale fictional Cornish town. Christened Polgras, the 8 ft by 4 ft model features a viaduct, an estuary, a supermarket, new-build houses and industrial buildings; every song from On Grace & Dignity is represented by a scene in the town. “There’s different parts of the experience of growing up in Cornwall in there,” he says. “Some of it was from me looking at it when I was down there that winter, and some of it was me harking back to the experience of growing up there. It’s defined by that sense of duality, of
coexisting realities,” he explains. “You’re geographically so far away, and it has a strong identity of its own, as well as a different landscape. It’s so rugged and bleak, but beautiful –which is what I really like in music.”