Harmony Woods, the project fronted by Philadelphia-based songwriter Sofia Verbilla, surprise-released their third album today, and it’s colossal. Named Graceful Rage, its a perfect blend of gritty rock ‘n’ roll and vulnerable songwriting emphasized by Verbilla’s clear-cut vocals. Guitar distortion rages like newly agitated flames behind Verbilla’s voice, but they never distract from the raw pathos of her words.
True to its name Graceful Rage, is a massive-sounding album. It was produced by D.C.-based musician Bartees Strange, who released his acclaimed album Live Forever last fall. Whether its breaking the news that “something is growing” inside her on “Rittenhouse” or reconciling that you can love parts of a person while loathing others on “Easy,” Verbilla depicts strikingly intimate and increasingly complicated remnants of what makes us human—lots of pain and the occasional euphoria of human touch. Her keenness for lyrical detail shouldn’t go unmentioned, from the emotional reaction of by-standing birds (“Even the pigeons are cringing now”) on “Rittenhouse,” to her ability to weaponize literature (“Keep writing those records / About how you know best / Like you’re a walking fucking copy of Infinite Jest“) used by a fuccboi demon on “God’s Gift to Women.”
Verbilla wrote that the album is about “confronting the emotional rubble that trauma leaves in its wake. Graceful Rage is the result of burying the feelings you’d much rather forget. The messy, complicated, fucked-up ones. The ones that fill us with guilt and shame. The ones that we have no choice but to acknowledge in order to put ourselves on the path towards healing. Once we allow ourselves to process the freshman year foibles, the bus stop run-ins, the bellows bouncing off exposed brick, we begin to find ourselves again.”
Stream it below.
