This isn’t a typical album review. This is a spur of the moment album review. A first listen, instinctual, album review. Capturing lines that stood out, emotions that lashed out, and stories that were haunted.
This was not published on 06/28/26, this was published at midnight on the album release on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/DermotKennedy/comments/1sb4b6m/first_listen_review_of_weight_of_the_woods/
The Review:
This is a collection of immediate thoughts and lyrics that stood out. It’s not magnificent, it’s a seat on the train with the thoughts looking out the window.
- The Weight of the Woods (Reprise)
Very bon iver. Cinematic, Grand, Orchestral, lovely.
- Honest
Makes me feel like running through a field. Makes me leaaan.
“i raced headfirst”
It’s propelling. It’s kinetic. It’s a vulnerable scream on a drive home. It’s a demand and a declare to world. It’s anguish packaged in serenity.
“you’ve been out all night chasing dogs and ghosts”
“i know you’re all i want”
it’s raw, it’s revealing, it’s transparent, it’s the transfer of energy.
love when it silences the theatrics and just goes to Dermont in peace, with piano, and just speaking. it’s so fragile, it’s the a table for one begging for two.
- Refuge
It sounds like a cabin. It sounds like something you’d sing on a camp fire. It’s a lullaby.
“promise i wont let you break” ”carve it in stone so the story survives”
It’s surfacing the vulnerabilities. “if we didn’t make it at least we can say we died trying”
“the memories don’t have to be perfect”
it’s such open love.
“watching your silhouette down the lake, promise i wont let you break”
it’s just watching a fire fail to entropy. it’s watching a sunset die but realize damn it was beautiful.
It’s exhaustion and falling asleep at the wheel trying to get home. Trying to secure the package.
I love how it’s able to be remorseful and empathetic.
Again, a switch up for the closing.
Becomes a barn burner. Becomes a something a crowd to clap to while dancing in a cirlce. Makes you want to proclaim and rejoice. It becomes religion!
- Funeral
Main character energy clearly. It’s a song that you wish you had your own life.
“i said this can’t be where it ends”
“not even poetry can fix this”
“right now we both need more than words”
Again, propelling, it’s movement, it’s forward progress, it’s a celebration of the death of the worse thing in this world. It’s laughing at your enemy. It’s dancing on a grave.
What a beautiful oxymoron.
The flow switches into water, fluid, and connecting, and immersive. The melody becomes a memory instantly. It’s something you wish you could bring in your backpack and take into life.
It’s a song I know I’ll sing one day.
- Endless
took a breath before he even started, instant reflection.
“quietly you crossed the floor, i can feel you crumbling”
“was I made just to suffer”
“honey you need to hear me now”
it’s a splinter you don’t remove.
“i couldn’t fix it for you baby”
“and the hurt is gone for now”
It’s a bruise you get tattooed so you remember it.
A well you look into and your eyes never adjust.
This isn’t even grieving, this is a death. it’s begging for another breath.
It’s facing death and realizing you weren’t ready… that all you want is another day. It’s terror and panic and the inability to breath.
It’s perpetual.
- Sycamore
Oh, this could be good.
Flows like a liquid thick with viscosity. And a falsetto, from Dermot? Dear god break the window.
not writing many lyrics to this one, must be more about the atmosphere, than the message. It’s a beautiful bottle, without a letter to read.
not a memorable one, probably will skip, but it’s fun.
- Often, Lately
Ok, im in it.
“i asked you for your favorite song, you played it for me twice, i knew the lyrics by the time we got home”
“i think about you often, lately”
I hope this man never finds love.
“will you be there when i walk down that road? I’m so scared you wont”
“I want it back more than i can admit”
- Turnstile
it sounds like a pop song written by someone other than my favorite artist
“i was playing with the fire that you made for me”
- Wasted
It sounds like a rom com guitar.
It is a rom com song, that’s ok, it’s super tasteful.
really fun, makes me smile.
something i can close my eyes to and feel good about, can tell these last two songs are intentionally connected.
- Blue Eyes
This tells his Justin Vernon influence again.
You can tell he has practiced the falsetto, but he begged for a song that he can embed it into. It’s perfectly haunting. It’s a song to play on a cold night, with a fire, and your loved one.
Will have to pour through the lyrics because they are distorted and washed like sand on a beach.
Love the switch to his normal voice.
This blended voice is fantastic in the second half, the fusion, the conflation, the realiziation of two blended personalities.
- Trepidation
Oh lil funk. Lil kick drum.
“im working on the courage on the things i want to say to you.”
“i want you all to myself”
this could have been a single.
“if your asking i never liked the songs that were happy all the way through”
loved the rhythm and cadence in his delivery
- The Only Time I Prayed
Been waiting for this from youtube previews.
Love the piano – it sounds like something that stains you.
God that piano is haunting.
This might be my first dance song.
I’ll play this one a bunch of times, it’s just so damn beautiful. It’s a lovely tune.
- Happiness
This is the Dermont i know.
“but it never got this dark”
“go without regret into your dark”
“go with happiness”
haunting, embodying, astral
What a lovely, heart breaking, song
I’ll play this after I lose someone
The strings tell a thousand stories
Haunting
- The Weight of the Woods
He always makes amazing finishers, let’s see
“turn the clouds into a ceiling”
“let me add to the weight of the woods”
“never thought my luck would reach the point you’d take me”
cullaways 
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