Windhand: Grief's Infernal Flower

The draw of Windhand is neither mysterious nor complicated: Even on the Virginia doom squadron’s very early demos, the haunted, hypnotic voice of Dorthia Cottrell cut through thick guitars like a finger beckoning through the pale fog. "Black Candles", the first song of the band’s first release, transcended its lockstep Black Sabbath ancestry only when she arrived, shifting as she did from a soulful moan to a blues wail in one sublime instant. Even when the band became more elaborate for their 2011 full-length debut, both by adding samples and entering extended psychedelic tangents, Cottrell remained the focus of the action and attention. Each song felt like a setup for her arrival, as Windhand methodically followed another set of doom or stoner instructions. Maybe it’s the group’s tube-amp buzz, but something about the relationship has long suggested a colony of worker bees, preparing the hive for its rightful queen.

But this approach—and Cottrell, specifically—got lost on Soma, the disappointing 2013 album that once seemed as if it might signal Windhand’s move toward the masses. Nearly from start to finish, Cottrell fought against the sounds surrounding her. The band suddenly subsumed the leader, presenting itself less as a support squad and more as the new star. Bass overran Cottrell on "Orchard", and the riffs wouldn’t step out of her way for "Woodbine". During the record’s two-song, 45-minute closing sequence, the band swallowed her almost entirely. Sure, the riffs, rhythms, and solos were competent and sometimes even captivating, but if you’re an idiomatic doom band signed to one of metal’s biggest labels, you’d hope so, right? Windhand overrode their best asset.

Grief’s Infernal Flower, Windhand’s third album and first with power producer Jack Endino, reverts to the strength of Cottrell and the songs themselves. The shift is apparent as soon as the drums and guitars lock into a march at the start of opener "Two Urns". Cottrell’s presentation—cool, collected, sinister—sits just above the surface of the still-roaring band. This time, she guides the action rather than being trapped inside the self-aggrandizing tumult. During the first eight minutes of Grief’s Infernal Flower, Windhand land a very deep hook, something they rarely accomplished across Soma’s 70 minutes. They even creep toward the economy and impact of alternative rock with "Crypt Key", a five-minute bruiser whose instant chorus suggests the Breeders with a big, burdensome case of the blues and a Sleep-sized backline. Windhand’s performances are direct without being simple here. The band and Endino take care to fold the layers of sound beneath or around Cottrell, never above her. 

This directness carries over to Cottrell’s two solo numbers, too, both of which are more concise and less cloaked than her lone acoustic turn from Soma. The wonderfully frail "Sparrow" ponders the space between eternal devotion and the disappointment that mortality inevitably brings. You can imagine it as an antediluvian tune Harry Smith might have collected or a number fit for Windhand’s vintage guitar vortex—a testament to Cottrell’s command of songs when she’s given space to sing them.

Despite Windhand’s emphasis on economy, the quintet hasn’t given up on its love of at-length indulgence and improvisation just yet. For the finale, they pair two 14-minute tracks, each ending with a slow, steady, psych rock march. There are extended solos in both, the tones bending and fluttering into surreal patterns. During "Kingfisher", Windhand hover in a half-acoustic, half-electric haze, suggesting folk rock lost on a narcotic trip. Still, even as the jam lurches ahead, the singer and the song seem in control, as Cottrell judiciously delivers her sermons at the start and in the middle. She then slips into the background, as if dispatching the band to do her bidding. Likewise, Cottrell drifts in and out of "Hesperus", appearing, disappearing, and reappearing only to counter electric miasmas with arching melismas. Even when she’s quiet, Cottrell is now in control.

Early this year, Cottrell released a self-titled set of solo recordings. With her voice multi-tracked and manipulated, she sang 11 rather simple folk-and-blues songs over her own acoustic accompaniment. The sound was lovely, yes, but the effort felt listless and inward, as if a tape recorder had just happened to catch these back-porch performances on the wind. The hesitation mirrored Soma. But making and issuing that album, released the same month Windhand cut Grief’s Infernal Flower, must have galvanized Cottrell’s role as a capable singer able to command an entire enterprise. She expresses no hesitation here, and for that, her band has never sounded better. Sure, you can come for the twin guitars and the loaded rhythm section, but at last, Cottrell has made it clear you’re staying for her.