AJ Woods - Hawk Is Listenin' (2024) Hi-Res

Perpetual Doom is proud to present Hawk is Listenin', the latest album from New Mexico singer-songwriter AJ Woods. The album depicts a surreal journey exploring the myths and history rooted in Albuquerque, the Southwest and the Republic as a whole, expanding AJ Woods' poetic songwriting into new and powerful landscapes. An incredible cast of musicians, including members of Hawk and a Hacksaw, The Sir Douglas Quintet, Neutral Milk Hotel, Heather Trost Band and more, delivers a startling message of friendship, loss, resistance and the relentless passage of time. "Albuquerque is a paved place. Ancestral heritage, colonial influences, family history and personal experiences intersect. AJ Woods embodies these multifaceted meanings in the nearly seven-minute title track, a dreamy catalogue of imagery drawn from the human and natural worlds, delicately arranged with heavily distorted guitars. As the song crescendos around the repetition of the title, we find a theme that runs throughout the album, an idea that underpins the poignant cry of "Wind on a Wildfire" and the desert elegy of "Coyote."

Jimmy Stallings, a well-known musician from the American Southwest, joined AJ Woods on the cover. Woods strongly resonated with this deeply personal expression, which he attributes to his close relationship with Stallings. "Our friendship is deepened by our shared experience of losing a parent at a young age. Jimmy expresses difficult themes in a raw way, and we feel free from the weight." The same could be said about The Hawk Is Listening as a whole. Woods’s rich songwriting talents, bolstered by an array of loving collaborators, invite us to reconsider the harsh realities that surround us. The epic “Gila” howls and rattles of a winding desert river, while “Knife’s Edge” impresses with droning guitar and harsh cymbals as backyard chants turn into fuzzed-out entertainment.

Recorded and produced by Jeremy Barnes at Albuquerque’s Sonido del Norte, these tracks testify to the universal power of local traditions, tight-knit communities, and the surprising urge to transform suffering into art. “It’s a place I love, but it’s also a sharp place at the same time. It can be hard to pay close attention to,” Woods says of New Mexico.