Ben Woods talks to us about expanding The Golden Dregs to a six-piece band and the experience moving from working with 4AD to releasing independently.
Photos: Declan Haughian | Words: Lloyd Bolton
With their newly released album 'Godspeed', The Golden Dregs expanded from the band-backed solo project of Ben Woods to a full time six-piece. The new album is a rich collection of vignettes which draw on a range of styles and sounds, reflecting a newly enlarged pool influences which builds on the core of timeless songwriting upon which the project's reputation grew. It is also the first album the Cornish-born Woods has written in London, despite having lived in the city for the past eight years.
Woods speaks to us about the evolution of the project, as well as the experience releasing this album in part through his new independent label Joy Of Life International in collaboration with End of the Road Records. Having been written with the expectation of releasing on 4AD in the same manner as previous LP 'On Grace & Dignity', the result came to be out of faith in the songs in spite of the label's decision to stop working with the band, that faith not only coming from Woods but also from the rest of the band and the team at End of the Road, a faith that goes beyond Spotify metrics and airplay reports.
How did you find the shift from writing as a solo artist to writing for a full band?
This album wasn't written for a band more than any of the previous records. I feel that all of The Golden Dregs records have the sonic hallmarks of a band to some extent. And the first album 'Lafayette' was recorded with a live band. But I think with 'Hope Is for the Hopeless' and 'On Grace & Dignity', the recording process was a lot more insular, and I would write and record at the same time, so the arrangement would inform the song, which would inform the melodies, etc.—more reactive, with little awareness of the outcome. This time around, I was writing for an album, for a label, and with studio time already booked in. So I was leaving space for the songs to grow in the studio environment.
What were three key records that influenced the making of 'Godspeed'?
Having toured a lot and been exposed to the inner workings of the music industry, my relationship with music shifted in many ways in the years leading up to making this record. Where music had once been mysterious and exciting, it had now been reduced to stats and metrics: sales figures, monthly listeners, concert capacity, Pitchfork rating. I felt like I'd really lost a lot of what connected me to records when I was growing up, and I wanted to make something that captured the sort of emotion I used to feel listening to records at college.
So I guess in that sense it was a whole era of records that influenced the making of the album. But maybe the most significant of these is 'Dear Science' by TV on the Radio—one of my favourite records back then, and probably still now. It's exciting and dense and complex and always relatable in some way or another.
But I don't really listen to much music while I'm working on music. It took me a long time to get the lyrics together for this album, and I think when I hit a particular dry spell, the two records I listened to most were 'Have One On Me' by Joanna Newsom and 'Illinois' by Sufjan Stevens. Both write in such a lucid and beautifully descriptive way.
What inspired you to start up your own label?
Necessity, really. It wasn't until November 2023—a couple of days before we started recording this album—that I found out that 4AD would not be releasing it (we only managed one album of a three-album deal). It was a crushing experience, but I ploughed everything I had into the record, thinking we'd most likely be able to find a new label and keep on moving.
By summer 2024, it became apparent that this was not going to happen. But we had this record, and I believed in it. I felt so disenfranchised with the whole industry that I decided that if I was going to do it, then it'd be on my own terms.
Initially, the idea had been to self-release. But I'd been working on, producing some great music with other artists, and it all just sort of clicked that maybe I could try to help them release their music in an artist-friendly manner and build some sort of sanctuary. Growing up, I loved connecting the dots between artists, and this would often be through the labels that put out their music. I don't really feel like this happens so much these days, but hopefully Joy of Life can be a world that people can find.
How has the experience of putting this record out yourself compared to working with 4AD on 'On Grace & Dignity?' And how did you come to be co-releasing with End of the Road Records?
To be really honest, it's not been the easiest transition. Having 4AD attached to this project certainly opened up doors in terms of bookings, press, and radio support. It's hard to get through to people now. Things have changed a lot since our last record—the music industry and the wider world—and I'm sure there's a lot of things at play. But I do think that getting dropped hasn't helped the industry's perception of this project.
4AD had resources too—an artwork team, video teams, social media teams, and offices around the world. Real deal stuff. And the expenses accounts! I miss those lunches.
This time around, I've done all the artwork and layouts. I've spent most of today printing shipping labels and packaging up records to go out. There's been no videos because I can't afford videos. It's been a lot of work and I've barely had any days off this year, but hey—we're doing it, putting out art, and I am proud of that.
There has also been an amazing response to the label from friends in and out of the music community. No one seems to have a particularly positive view of how the industry operates at the moment, and I think a lot of people feel that the label is something they can really get behind.
We've been working with End of the Road since 2019. They manage the band and have been our biggest champions and supporters. They stood by us when it felt like no one else would. Having facilitated several releases in the past, they had the infrastructure and experience to help with this one—so setting up Joy of Life as an imprint made perfect sense.
Returning to the songs themselves, what was the hardest song to realise on this album?
I've been working on 'Linoleum' since maybe 2012, or at least it's existed in some form or another since then. I think it's been recorded four or five times, each with different or incomplete lyrics, and I've never been able to get it quite right. This album felt like the right time to make it work. As I mentioned before, I wanted the record to have the immediacy and emotional clout of the records I was drawn to growing up, and this song sort of encapsulates that. I knew what the song wanted to do and how it felt, but I just couldn't find the place in which it existed—until now.
Were there any rules you set yourself in writing these songs or deciding which to put on the album?
I think a few things set it apart from previous records immediately—that it was the first album I've written in London, that the band have all contributed towards the creation of the record, and that when I've written albums in the past it's been without giving any thought to the subsequent release. Whereas this one (as far as I was aware at the time) was going to be released by 4AD.
So through nurture and nature this record was already headed towards being more instantaneous than previous ones. We also recorded a lot more songs than we needed—we started off with 20 demos. Some fell off along the way, and I tried not to labour too much over an idea that felt like it wasn't going anywhere.
When we left the studio, we'd finished 15 tracks, which we democratically whittled down to 10. I ended up writing and recording two more when I was mixing the record—'Godspeed' and 'Erasure' —both of which felt necessary to complete the world of this record.
The album draws heavily on urban experiences. Would you say that living in London has particularly changed your approach to songwriting?
I've lived in London for eight years now, yet these were the first songs I've written here. When I say songs, I specifically mean lyrics—I've written a lot of music and melody whilst living in London, and find that to be a great meditation or antidote to a hectic environment. But lyrics seem to come from elongated periods of stillness—moments in my life at which I'm simultaneously hyper-aware of my emotions and my surroundings and also switched off to the point of not being self-conscious. London can be a tough place to find that equilibrium. There's constant stimulation. It's so easy to find distraction or self-medication.
Cornwall, on the other hand, presents an abundance of time. But I definitely felt the need to shake things up for this record, and pushing myself to write in London brought more into view the lives of others and the ways in which our lived experiences intersect.
Picking up in particular on the themes of 'Linoleum', how would you say the internet age informs the way you write and what you write about?
Up until I read this question, it hadn't even crossed my mind how these lyrics might relate to the internet—but I can see how they could be perceived that way. To me, 'Linoleum' is about camaraderie and blind faith and wild expectation, so it fits.
But there's something about the internet that feels at odds with the way in which I write. To me, a lot of what I hear in way people write at the moment is so hyper-referential that it feels shallow, and so relevant that it is destined for irrelevance. I guess in trying to steer clear of that is probably where the folk and Americana comparisons come from. I don't set out to make music in a particular style, and being labelled as such often gets my back up—as, in my own insecurity, it makes me feel like I'm being labelled irrelevant or outdated. Which may or may not be true! But my writing has been informed by many 'classic' songwriters, and I do strive to make music that can't be attached to any one period of time, to allow the songs a life outside of a moment.
Describe what you think is the ideal setting in which to listen to Godspeed.
This is definitely a travelling record. I'd like to think it would work well in a car, played loud, driving towards a setting sun.
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