Single Review: Alex Woodward “Ordinary Soil”

The soft and stoic start of “Ordinary Soil,” the new single by Alex Woodard, conjures images of a weary traveler making camp at dusk and sparking up a campfire beside which he plans to tell us a story as old as time. Woodard acts as our storyteller in this song, sitting beside the roaring embers of his silent backdrop, and he doesn’t hesitate to dispense fiery acoustic thunder in between his verses as he plaintively tells his tale.

There’s nothing reserved about his lyrics; Woodard has been around and he knows of the treachery surrounding us. He’s looking for a feeling that is evading him with illustrious skill, but the tone of his voice says he’s not about to give up so easily. The blaze burns on as we descend into the chorus of the song, and if you’re tough enough to stand the heat from the flames as it penetrates the speakers in the form of a rigid bassline, then you’re in for quite the adventure with “Ordinary Soil.” Alex Woodard didn’t just churn out a fun new single for us in this song; he assembled an engaging introduction to an intriguing style of folk-rock.

Our singer might not be reserved in his prose, but his performance is nonetheless quite insular by nature. Woodard hides behind the smokescreen of the melody in this track as if to suggest that he doesn’t want to be the center of our attention here; the music is, after all, just as evocative as his verses, but it’s markedly more ominous in its tone.

The harmony between him and the instruments is stellar, cerebral even, but it too plays second fiddle to the strut of the pushy tempo. The pulsating implied beat never gets any less tense than it does as we approach the chorus, but that’s exactly what made me fall in love with this single as much as I have; the climax is the tension that’s building around us. Instead of being a frustrating experience, this concept makes “Ordinary Soil” a seductive piece that does not attempt to conceal its true intentions to trap us in these angular rhythms and smother us with a gorgeous melody.

Hauntingly dark and evocatively harmony-laden in all the right spots, Alex Woodard’s new single was designed with folk music’s hardcore fans in mind but satisfies outside admirers of its more casual subgenres just the same. Other than the melodic cushion generated by Woodard’s striking vocals, this is an unforgiving track that basks in its eccentricities and shamelessly celebrates its rough edges, which in my opinion makes it quite a find in today’s stagnant pop market. I also think that relative to past works, this artist seems a little more confident in his performance here. His sound has come into its own musically, and I think that this single represents a turning point for the man behind the music as a solo performer. Based on the strength of this latest release, I’m quite excited to see what he has in store for us next.

 

Emily Ott