The old man of the woods is a bolete mushroom native to deciduous and coniferous forests of Europe and North America. Unlike the group formation of many fungi, it often occurs singularly, and the cap grows to resemble a pine cone as it ages, meaning that the fruit body blends seamlessly into the leaf litter. Life emerging from detritus, a mushroom almost indistinguishable from the forest floor in which it exists.
old man of the woods, the recording project of Richmond-based songwriter and producer Miranda Elliott, shares more than a name with the fungus. The only child of a landscape painter, Elliott describes how the “forest felt like kin,” and this closeness to the nature extends into her music. As the title suggests, debut EP dissolve blurs the line between the personal and the natural world, conjuring a vivid and sometimes eerie soundscape as damp and rich as the woodland floor.
Opening tracks ‘make your bed’ and ‘floating leaves’ welcome you into the world of dissolve, highlighting how the release shares some of the strategies of fungal life. For within the fertile hush and pattering synths lies confusion and pain, but through the music these emotions are processed into something life-giving. What Elliott calls “that alchemy of shit into sustenance.”
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The subtle electronics of ‘coast in bloom’ swell gently with an organic idiosyncrasy, bringing to mind the detailed compositions of Lejsovka & Freund. While the fleet-footed beats of ‘talking heads’ has a Sylvan Esso-esque quality, the song pushing out into the inorganic world of abstract opinions and information overload. The lushness of ‘fill me’ feels like a reaction against this, facing up to the empty promise of this world, longing for some deeper meaning to emerge and perhaps finding it within its own organic sound.
The title track closes the release and sums up the binding spirit of dissolve. Emerging from a still, low-hanging fog, the track is at once sparse and richly textured, the seeming emptiness of the echoing sound belying the dewy fecundity at its heart. For ‘Dissolve’, and indeed the music of old man of the woods as a whole, is a forest of its own. One often still and quiet, mournful in the way woods can be, but quietly powerful too. Because the systems of life and consumption within the natural world are different to those of our own, and within the lonely forest and its constant regrowth lies a humble secret. A comfort, a humble triumph over death.
i will dissolve
not rot in graveyards of stale thoughts
i will absolve
the weight that you can’t recall
making mine
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dissolve is out now and you can get it from the old man of the woods Bandcamp page.
Album art and photograph by Miranda Elliott, portrait by Linda Moses