The Golden Dregs – On Grace & Dignity (LP Vinyl)
Product Details
Benjamin Francis Leftwich's project The Golden Dregs occupies a genuinely singular corner of British songwriting, drawing on the widescreen melancholy of Scott Walker and the literary detail of early Elvis Costello while remaining stubbornly its own thing. On Grace & Dignity landed on 4AD, a label with a long history of nurturing artists who resist easy categorization, and it fits that lineage without sounding like it's trying to.
The beautiful third album by the GOLDEN DREGS, On Grace and Dignity, starts with a scene of a man going on holiday in search of his “best self”. In among the personal reflections on loss of innocence and inferiority, Benjamin 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. (Benjamin recorded it at his place –that’s his sister Hannah on saxophone.) Life here proceeds at a graceful pace –the bass is sturdy, organs celestial, horns softly valedictory –grounded by Benjamin’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.
Tracklist
Side A
Side B
UPC: 191400052710
Label: 4ad
Release Date: 2.10.23
Format: LP Vinyl