Similar to the (darker) sounds of Night People, Sacred Bones, and Hardly Art, Well Yells (born Patrick Holbrook) presents the music of Waves In The Woods in its entirety. Harnessed in a black-metal-esque philosophical modality of the natural world, all eight tracks wrap themselves around listeners in a distant cry for help. Sort of like how The Body vocals sound more terrified than angry/hateful, Holbrook’s singing crosses itself between forsaken and ceremonial, as if a ritual is being performed in the forest, deep at the bottom of some water-hole, and all the sound is drowned out by surrounding nature. Though, it’s Waves In The Woods’ instrumentals representing the intangible: wind, cold, night/dusk, depravity, desolation, desertion, etc.
And as much as Waves In The Woods is scotch or reflective or Friday-nite music to listeners throughout seven of the composed tracks, Well Yells’ last track, “The Way,” perfectly sums up that lasting feel of the album. It’s my favorite thing when a story ends without explanation, giving me two or a few assumptions in order to tie loose ends. “The Way” is just a recording of wind and something metallic being moved by it. It’s a rusted sound; a sound that rings similar (and frightening) to me smoking outside at 3AM in the winter, sound has been frozen to death, and then my neighbor’s weather vane screeches across the goosebumps of my skin. Well Yells’ “The Way,” I believe, provides the sound of that water bucket dangling in the wind, losing echo throughout the Waves In The Woods, without the voice we’ve heard throughout the seven tracks previously, as if it’s gone from this earth, or has accepted fate.
I know I’ll be accepting my fate smoking outside around 3AM, sporting my fan t-shirt under a coat, while listening to Waves In The Woods by Well Yells break the eerie silence with a likening soundtrack, and you can too:
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