Harmony Woods Channeled Her 'Graceful Rage' To Create 2021's Most Devastating Rock Record
"This record took years to make, and the thing is I didn't even know I was making it."
“Basically, I just want to get across that this shit sucks, but it happens. You got to let yourself feel no matter what.”
That’s the message at the heart of one of the most raw and ripping rock records I’ve heard in months. It’s called Graceful Rage and it was written and recorded by a young singer-songwriter from Philadelphia named Sofia Verbilla. For the purposes of artistry, she goes by the name Harmony Woods, an alias she swiped from a neighborhood in nearby Newark, Delaware.
To call Graceful Rage a devastating listen is almost an insult to the word “devastating.” Across its 34-minutes, Verbilla opens up with vivid candor about the emotional toll the past few years have taken. There are songs about heartbreak. Songs about loneliness. Songs about how “Everything’s fucked.” Songs about finding love for yourself, when you can’t seem to get it elsewhere.
“I was just going through life fast, fast, fast,” she said. “Doing school, doing band, doing work, not really having the time to deal with these really shitty things that have happened in my life. It all climaxed into this sort of breakdown. Then the pandemic hit.”
While COVID-19 has continued to make life miserable on a 1,000 different levels, the time in solitude allowed Verbilla to think and reflect on the events of her past in a tangible way. She sought out therapy. She talked stayed in touch with friends, and read up on articles about mental health. Eventually, she channelled some of her thoughts and feelings into music.
“This record took years to make,” she said. “The thing is I didn't even know I was making it. I had been writing songs, and I had also been coming back to songs that I'd written before; songs that I have written purely for therapeutic purposes. Songs that I never, ever, ever thought that I would put out in a million years just because they were too personal, or they're too real. I started looking at these songs as a collective whole and I was like, ‘Okay if I were to release these, is there any chance at all that it could help people?’”
She knew she was taking a risk by being so revealing in this music, but it felt like a risk worth taking. “Before then, creatively I was just in a complete rut, and I had zero self-confidence, zero confidence in my career and where it was going. I was just feeling very, very lost. For the first time in an extremely long time, I had this sort of light bulb over my head.”
While all the songs that ultimately made it onto Graceful Rage are stunning for their raw emotional honesty, it’s the title track that gave her the most pause. Specifically, what she calls, “that freaking, very, very vulnerable opening line.”
“I told you I wanted to kill myself / You took that as meaning something else / A clever way to get you to stay / A toxic maneuver to quell my heartbreak.”
“It's just like, ‘Okay, what are people going to think when they hear this?’” she said. “But honestly the response has been absolutely unreal. I never would have imagined people to connect with it the way that they are.”
That was her hope all along. That the power of empathy and shared experience could lift someone in a moment when they truly needed lifting. “People are struggling,” she said. “And people have specific struggles that aren't necessarily being talked about a lot, or aren't at the forefront of the conversation. All I could think was, ‘Okay, if I had heard songs like these a few months ago, back when I was going through that really, really, really rough time, it would have meant everything to me.’”
Eventually, Verbilla accumulated enough material to start putting together her next record. Then she approached her label, Skeletal Lightning, with an idea. She wanted to release the entire thing as a surprise album. No warning whatsoever. Throw it out into the world on a random Friday night and hope that it finds it way to the people who need it most. While other companies might balk at that proposition, Skeletal Lightning were into it and gave her the green light to proceed. “It all came together from there,” she said.
The next step in the process was to find a producer and a place to record. Not an easy task in the time of COVID. As luck would have it, rising indie rock star Bartees Strange had put the word out he was looking to record with different artists at 38 North recording studio in Falls Church, Virginia. They had masks, hospital grade air filters; the works.
The pair bonded initally over a shared love on The National — Cherry Tree EP, I Am Easy To Find, Boxer, and High Violet are her favorites — and a general goofiness that elevated the entire endeavor. “It's a pretty dark record, but every fucking day we were just giggling our asses off about something,” Verbilla said. “I can't imagine having worked with anyone else on this record, truly. He was the fit. He was the only fit in my eyes.”
For Bartees Strange the decision to work on Graceful Rage was a no-brainer. As soon as he got a listen of her acoustic demos, he was in. “It was a really beautiful experience,” he said. “We connected completely on vibe, influences, and tonal characteristics we wanted to hear in the record. Sofia has serious taste and serious chops. She can run circles around a lot of guitar players, she can sing, she’s funny as hell, and she shreds keys. She’s also incredible gracious and “quick”, in the British sense. I’m grateful for how receptive she was to the directions I wanted to go.”
From the outset, Verbilla had three sonic touchstones that dictated the overall sound of Graceful Rage. Lorde’s Melodrama. Disintegration by The Cure. And, of course, The Cherry Tree EP by The National. “I wanted really, really strong top melodies with really, really, really intense percussion and rhythm sections. But also folky, sparkly more singer-songwriter elements intertwined,” she explained.
The most successful of their many, arresting sonic constructions is the song “Holding You To You,” which chugs along with all the menace of a Harley riding down a dark highway before exploding in a cacophony of dissonant guitars and cataclysmic tom-toms. All the rage, without the grace.
“There are a lot of soft moments on the record, a lot of graceful moments, but looking at the songs before we headed to the studio, I realized that a huge part of the healing process is allowing yourself to feel that rage and feel that anger and just let it all out. Not necessarily lashing out to other people externally, but just sort of letting it get out of your system. I feel like it was very cathartic to record this for sure.”
With Graceful Rage finally out in the world, and the end of lockdown nearly in sight, Verbilla has been lately turning her eyes to a future brimming with uncertainty. “Being such a small band, I feel like most of it is out of our hands,” she said. “It all just depends on if other people keep connecting with this record.”
First thing’s first however; she’s genuinely stoked to debut this newer stuff onstage and in front of people. “I connect with these songs so hard,” she said. “The arrangements are so much more intricate than our previous stuff. It's like I've been daydreaming so hard about not only playing these songs live, but also coming back to our older songs and rearranging those and playing them live with this huge lineup.”
A gig at Union Transfer in Philly, reigns at the top of her wishlist. “We opened for the first of three Modern Baseball farewell shows at Union Transfer. Ever since then, I've been dying to play at Union Transfer again,” she said. “So, if there's any chance in hell that we could play UT again, I'm jumping at it. I fucking love that venue.
Graceful Rage by Harmony Woods is out now via Skeletal Lightning. You can purchase a digital copy or limited-edition vinyl here.