Music
Press
A hazy brand of desert night blues caked in clay and baked by the setting sun. These are lonesome moon odes to desperate spaces; murky dreams full of easy venom and soft elixirs. Occupying the slim window where Brightblack Morning Light stop and Wooden Wand begins, the band carry themselves like troubadours of the last caravan West. A perfect accompaniment for whisky at 4 a.m. when the wind stills. The soft electric strum of strings vibrating off of the canyon walls and straight down the back of your spine. - Raven Sings The Blues
Full of hauntingly psychedelic songs the whole album is a magical listening experience rich with wonder and mystery. Opening song “Skydye” has some snaking west coast guitar lines and dream-laden ambience, that pulls you straight in, only to be left breathless with joy 40 minutes later, as the last strains of the eight minute “Arizona” lower you gently back to earth. The last two minutes consisting of birdsong, giving you time to re-adjust to your re-entry. In-between, you will have been treated to some of the mellowest guitar you have heard for a long time, as ethereal as a twist of incense smoke, as heady as the first blooms of spring. - Terrascope UK
Formerly known as Worship (they released a small cd-r pressing under that moniker), the elusive group who now answer to the name Headdress continue their dusk lit creep through the enchanted wilderness. On Turquoise they craft a beautiful loosely woven tapestry of ivy-like guitar tendrils, lichen-encrusted percussion, solemn mossy male vocals that reside somewhere between Jandek and M. Ward. The album's fifth song "Babylon" sounds strangely like a deconstructed folk rendition of America's "Horse With No Name". Whether intentional or not, the glinting familiarity of the latter's central melody adds to the existing subtle hallucinatory atmosphere of the proceedings. The crowning jewel of rough hewn Turquoise though is the sixth track titled "Moon Of Shedding Ponies". It's a frayed, meditative instrumental populated with generous turns of a rainstick and what sounds like howling wolves or banshees.
If you dig the rustic, abstracted psych-folk sounds of Wooden Wand & The Vanishing Voice and the many bewitching branches of the Jewelled Antler Collective, don't miss this! - Aquarius Records
Beautifully lo-fi, Headdress’ “Turquoise” is more of an experience than a flat out album. Ariel Pink meets Desperado, the album plays up echoes and evokes a desertscape, giving of a distinct vibe of stationary solitude. “Turquoise” is a tad literal on the “natural,” featuring crickets and wolves along with soft and minimal instrumentals, but nothing that I’ve heard this year comes close to the vivid, almost photographic imagery that results from listening to Headdress. - Culture Warrior
Headdress evokes the feeling of the American desert in their work. Truly, there is a sparse and dry feeling to the whole album and it is easy to imagine being out under the desert stars when you put it on. The most fitting description of Headdress may be that the band sounds like folk, blues, and country that’s all been left to bleach and fade in the southwestern desert. All of the original components are still in place, they’ve just been warped by the dust, sun, and heat. This aesthetic has a lot to do with the primitive sound of the recording. Every ringing note and echo takes on a more primal, ethereal feel than it ever would have otherwise. There is a profound sense of space in every song on the disc as Headdress lets each instrument speak for itself without a lot of background clutter. In the end, it’s the sustained feeling of sitting out in the desert night that solidifies “Turquoise.” - Foxy Digitalis
One of the best local surprises of the summer: the full-length debut from nomadic local duo Headdress. Spare guitar, spare drums and percussion, breathy, reverbed vocals; elsewhere it might sound too precious, but on Turquoise (Totem Songs), it makes for a minimalist blues meditation that never gets long-winded. There's a running theme, from opener "Skydye" and the wobbly banjo on "The Painted Desert" to wolves howling on "Moon of Shedding Ponies." There's also a reverence for the dark side of Americana and folk. - Audra Schroder, The Austin Chronicle
Rain drop guitar plucking, windy vocals and distant claps of thunderous tambourine combine to paint the deserted backdrop of Turquoise. Once in full downpour, the rivers of the album run full and wolves come out to stretch their legs. The climax is the day after with the formerly crackled and dry desert now green and full of life; crickets and birds sing out, and lazy rays of sun dance through the guitar, shimmering as they strike the mountains of vocals. - Naturalismo
Headdress (formerly Worship) specialize in predominately instrumental songs thick with echo, space and traditional elements. Fans of Dirty Three will like the band's latest album, Turquoise, a dark, brooding jaunt into a dimly lit motel room on the edge of some southwestern town. Each note and every carefully chosen guitar lick fall carefully into place, purposefully, amidst the ominous compositions. - The Austinist
The carnivalesque climate of the Carousel Lounge lends itself well to psychedelic folk and flow. Saturday night, nomadic duo Headdress, Austinites of two months, filled in the corners and droned heavily from the dark, bruised blues plodding softly against the drunken noise in the back of the bar like a scene from Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus. Resembling Waylon Jennings circa 1976, Caleb Coy's stripped, lingering guitar notes bent like rusted barbed wire, hauntingly saturated by Ethan Cook's dreary, repetitive chords on the tie-dyed draped keys. The dark holler harmonica and hot Southern junkyard twang of lap steel melted into vocals drowned in enough reverb to fill canyons. Not surprisingly, Headdress recorded its exquisitely impalpable debut, Turquoise, underground in Arizona. - Doug Freeman, The Austin Chronicle
Headdress is a nomadic folk duo that has been camping out in Austin for the latter half of 2007, after spending the last two years traversing through the southwest. The group’s mystical travels and restless spirit is well-represented on their breezy full-length debut, Turquoise (Totem Songs), which was supposedly recorded underground in Arizona. At times recalling the pastoral roaming and freak folk of contemporaries like Brightblack Morning Light, MV + EE, and Wooden Wand & the Vanishing Voice, the album more closely resembles the dark side of Neil Young’s Harvest, a somber and stripped-down meditation on the roots of Americana and blues. Call it hill country psych, born under a bad sign. - Austin Sound
Discography
Turquoise (2007)
Silence Is The Golden Mountain EP (2006)
Photos
Bio
Headdress is a new mysterious duo of native Texans who have spent the last two years wandering throughout the American West. Their first EP entitled "Silence is the Golden Mountain" was written and recorded in the woods along the south fork of the Yuba River in the Nation of Northern California where they lived in tents during the Summer of 02006. They only released 100 hand numbered and handsewn copies throughout the Bay Area. After buying a van called Cloud, they headed south and spent time in Big Sur as well as Joshua Tree before finding their way into the Great American Southwest. This was the birthplace and muse of their first full-length under the new moniker of Headdress and entitled "Turquoise". The record was recorded 02007 in a hollow hill in the grasslands of the Sonoran Desert under the Moon of Shedding Ponies (May). After the release of "Turquoise" they sold their van and bought a Recreation Vehicle called The Golden Horse aka Goldie and headed home to the hills of Texas. Since then, they are making a name for themselves in Austin and becoming favorites of The Austin Chronicle, have recorded new material for California's Attacknine Records, completed a Westcoast tour in September and are set for their first full-scale national tour in January with Jack Welsh and the Five Civilized Tribes of Bear Creek.
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