the Wooden Wolf - Indigo Prayers, Op.8

Here is a folk pearl, a diamond in the rough: very authentic, pure and captivating.

Since Alex Keiling, a 40-year-old from Alsace, originally from St-Pierre & Miquelon, with a Canadian mother, chose this artist name, let's walk into the den of this fake wolf! For he’s just released his 8th opus (it's written on it). Already? It's a shame that I've never heard of him before. Away from any media circus, he has been refining his melodies, lyrics and arrangements for the 14 years that this project has been existing, and does everything on his own (acoustic, electric or slide guitars, percussions, violin...) – including the sleeve.
Listening to it, you understand that you probably have to be a bit of a hermit to make such music.

As a major folk influence, the Canadian Leonard Cohen is naturally one of his inspirations, but also Nirvana, unplugged version (quite striking on the chorus of "Ephedrine"). And Pink Floyd of course. He also names in his old references the Americans Bonnie "Prince" Billy and Jason Molina, and for the recent ones the Australians of Springtime and Tropical Fuck Storm. I warn you, it's not on his music that we're going to fidget, we're more in melancholy, in introspection, in the beginning of the night....

Let us move forward.
"Flutter" looks a bit like Bowie's "Space Oddity" but expresses the feeling of being delivered from a love.
His penchant for mountaineering is mentioned ("Climbing").
As for the text of "Lick up my Heart", uh... Am I the only one with a dirty mind?
The very musicians among you will notice the contribution of the triplets in "Black Fire", this little fire that we all have inside, which is not visible but which consumes us all little by little.
Supporting the progression, almost all along the bowed strings are used as accompaniment not for their melodic abilities, but rather for their sound, most often in drone, giving even more body to already palpable assemblages.

We come out of there touched by this flayed voice, convinced that we have approached something rare. An artist like him is precious. You have to keep him aside, warm, at hand, to be able to take him out and put him between your ears every time the saturation of the "big machines" is felt.
Just as one preserves a pearl, a diamond in the rough.