Dave Steel “Wooden Music”
INDEPENDENT, 2025
“Salvation for a moment is some music I don’t recognise”.
Roaming in the desert, searching for deliverance or truth, is a tale old as recorded history. In The Red
Book, psychologist Carl Jung observed that, in traversing that wasteland “the way leads so far away from mankind. I take my way step by step, and do not know how long my journey will last”.
Maybe that desert Dave Steel’s music conjures is the Australian Outback. Really, it could be anywhere on Earth – a road outstretched endlessly in reckoning with the self. That is the very experience of “Wooden Music”. With a fiddle and a gritty, stripped-back voice, Steel envisions a gothic, neo-Western sort of Americana that I’ve come to realise Australians do really well. Thematically reminiscent of Paul Kelly’s “Foggy Highway” and Nick Cave’s later
work, Dave Steel’s “Wooden Music” taps into something almost arcane in folk music. Yet amidst his equally
introspective peers, Steel manages to cut much deeper on this album. It is a philosophical triumph.
The first two tracks, “Roads” and “Sea Wind”, establish the mood of “Wooden Music”, a haunting, transcendental
soundscape. The oceanic feeling Romain Rolland once sought an explanation for is the very thing Steel carries in his mind; “I’ve had enough of this melancholia” he avows at the end of “Sea Wind”.
Deeply introspective, and at times utterly philosophical, the entire album balances the difficulty of escaping the past, while looking towards some brightness on the horizon, however distant. Almost all of the songs appear to take place on the road, and sometimes this is very literal; memories are retraced in “Like As Not” where Steel has “been around this way again”.
Elsewhere, “Wooden Music” evokes lyrics that warrant skipping back to listen once more, almost unbelievable in
their succinctness. “Salvation for a moment is some music I don’t recognise”, Steel sings in “Upside”, and later in “Go In Peace”, he appears to mourn a loved one. “Send me up a signal fire so I can find you there”, he asks of his friend as they journey to the other side, on a road much like his own.
“Hard Time Killin’ Floor” and “The Dying Stockman” are so soulful and eerie, they can hardly be put into words. It is
bewildering that someone can write about burying a body so deep that it can’t be eaten by dingoes and make it one of the most breathtaking songs on the album. And like the very nature of life and death itself, the music picks back up after silence and plays on at the album’s end, a reincarnation of song.
Beautifully haunting, “Wooden Music” puts an Americana soundtrack to the musings of the existentialists and
psychoanalysts of the last century, whether or not they knew how to play a fiddle. If ever there was a collective
unconscious, Dave Steel has tapped into it. Arm yourself with a pair of noise-cancelling headphones, sit outdoors in nature if you can, and prepare yourself for a masterpiece.
10/10
Fiona Golden. Americana UK May 2025
Review of Wooden Music from exileshmagazine.com in Spain.
On the 26th of May David H. Molina 'Nikochan' wrote (and this is a translation):
Dave Steel – Wooden Music (2025): A Glorious Road Trip to American Roots
Dave Steel releases one of the best albums not only of the year but of the last five years. Unexpected and beautiful, pure musical craftsmanship. They say that seniority is a degree, that life experience can make a difference, but in music, nothing is without talent, without magic. When seniority becomes a wrinkle, and that wrinkle is beautiful, it will undoubtedly bear the name of Dave Steel. A veteran Australian musician, influenced by Dylan, Browne, and classic American singer-songwriters like Dave Rawling, who has participated in several top-flight bands in the other parts of the world and has a wealth of nearly a dozen solo albums.
Dave Steel is an Australian singer-songwriter, roots musician, founding member of Weddings Parties Anything, and a session musician for countless bands. In recent years, he has focused on accompanying Tiffany Eckhardt as an instrumentalist in her band and in his role as a university professor until the urge to sing again took hold. Later, the muses appeared, and he created an album, Wooden Music, which is a true marvel. A blessing, an album that will surely be referred to countless times. Recorded in the Huon Valley, in Lutruwita (Tasmania), alongside Ross Smithard on violin, Louis Gill on double bass, and Tiffany Eckhardt herself on backing vocals, Steel focuses on his guitar, his voice, and a magnificent ten compositions to deliver an essential album, his first in no less than twenty years, full of quality, magic, and lots and lots of beautiful wrinkles. He had already shown his greatness before with, for example, "Bitter Sweet" (1989) or the wonderful "The edge of the world" (1999), with which I met him.
The new songs are a look back, an act of craftsmanship. Wooden, introspective, evocative, and magical music. A road trip to the roots of Americana. Listening to the captivating and cinematic "Road" brings that wicked, yet pleasurable smile to your face. What a marvel! A beautiful wrinkle! Take the back road, roll down the windows, turn up the volume to the max, and let Mr. Steel illuminate your journey with pure and easy melodies. "Like as Not" is light, positivity, that memory that comes back to us and doesn't bring a smile to our faces or a tear to our eyes, like in "Go in Peace." Beautiful.
And the entire album is a riot, from the bluesy violin of "Sickle Moon" to the grandeur of "Seawind," which, like the opening "Road," defines the essence of the album, to the country-souled beauty of "Upside." Everything, everything, is outstanding. And although we already believe it won't surprise us, "Hard Times" breaks our hearts in two. The final trio only confirms that we're in front of a great album that unfortunately will go unnoticed by the vast majority, a shame, forgive them, Lord, they don't know what they're missing... And violins play, and "Woodsmoke" plays to delight and delight us, "Winter" plays to envelop us and carry us away to the close with the fantastic and mysterious "The Dying Stockman," a colossal close to a colossal album. Don't miss it or you'll never forgive yourself.
David H. Molina 'Nikochan'. Director and Editor of Exile Sh Magazine