16 HP (Sixteen Horsepower) Smooch Records DVD (2005) $21.99

Disc one is all interviews, beginning with Edwards and drummer Jean-Yves Tola playing word association games with an unseen interrogator, bemusedly mumbling the first things that come to their heads in response to words like "passion", "evil" and "true love". Edwards does most of the talking, though he is laconic and clearly skeptical about some of the later, sillier words, including "decadence" and "poison arrow". As in other interviews, he is very upfront about his religious beliefs. Responding to "God", for instance, he states "God is the one who made me and gave me everything that's good. I'm friends with him most of the time, but he's friends with me all of the time." For "evil", he answers, "The definition of evil is selfishness and thinking about yourself before others. That's where it comes from." The answers are sure, thought-out and pared down to essentials, so that you get the sense that he thinks about good and evil and love and music all the time, but doesn't see much point in talking about them.

The second interview, with Paul Epstein, is far more revealing; Edwards recalls his boyhood travels with his grandfather, a Nazarene preacher. He estimates that he spent three or four days a week in church, and countless hours visiting the sick and ill, attending funerals and weddings for people he didn't know and connecting with the somber, simple music of his grandfather's church. During a very moving break in the interview, he sings the old hymn "Wayfaring Stranger" to his own banjo accompaniment, a fast-paced, rhythmic, passionate version of the song. "Would your grandfather approve?" the interviewer asks, and Edwards gives a half smile and says that he played that song for his grandfather, and he liked it very much. This interview also delves into Edwards's feelings about Bob Dylan, another traditionally rooted eccentric who has struggled with questions of faith throughout his career. Edwards recalls how he plastered his walls with photocopies of the cover to Another Side of Bob Dylan when he was young and played the album over and over. Later, Dylan's Christian period -- John Wesley Harding particularly -- became a point of fascination.

A third interview with Edwards and Tola is less technically adept -- the audio slips out of sync and double images sometimes haunts the screen -- but it's worth watching for the intercut footage of an early 16 Horsepower show at the Mercury Lounge. And finally, there's an interview from 2003, when the band must have already been feeling some tension. Edwards hedges when asked whether there will be another album. Band members have legs and arms crossed and fail to look at each other. Although band members respond thoughtfully to questions, the interview is far less comfortable than the others. It's hard to believe that they stuck together for another year!

The second disc is more entertaining than the first. It consists of the music that 16 Horsepower made -- all the videos, live footage and one fairly bizarre concert documentary from 2003. Of the cinematic videos, I liked "Haw" the best: shot in black and white with very occasional, disturbing flashes of color. It opens with the image of a hanged man, photographed from the bottom, and a hedge of weirdly reverbed acoustic guitars. Edwards appears in old-fashioned hat and suit, checking a pocket watch, and there is footage of band members digging something -- a grave, perhaps? The most memorable image, however, comes when Edwards dances a crazy jig, something he'll resurrect in the "Clogger" video, in the doorway of a ruined building. The music is somber and intense, packed with crazy suppressed energy, and Edwards captures this feeling with his rigid posture and dark suit, kicking up his heels like he can't help himself. "Clogger", shot in front of an audience, is also quite good, with its furiously driving beat and distorted vocals. It is wildly celebratory and cathartic, giving a hint at how all-encompassing a 16 Horsepower show must have been, but shots of spectators show them unmoved by it. "Hutterite Mile", from Folklore, reinforces its stern lyrics with Biblical engravings, juxtaposing words about exile with images of the serpent, Eve and St. Paul stoning the martyr.

Disc two also includes a number of concert films, and the best and most astonishing, in its way, records the band performing Joy Division's "Heart and Soul" at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 2004. There is a huge crowd, and Edwards and his band are playing electric instruments. The song starts with a heavy, buzzing bassline and rigid drums. Edwards's guitar comes in only gradually, and then his voice. The song is mesmerizing, hallucinatory, and surprisingly contiguous with 16 Horsepower's other work. The song's lyrics -- "A path that's bent on destruction/the struggle between right and wrong" -- are just as concerned with moral issues, just as intense and impassioned as 16 HP's own songs. Edwards has talked about being influenced by Joy Division in addition to more traditional music, and this performance makes the connection absolutely clear.

Disc two closes with a Belgian documentary that follows the band for 24 hours, capturing them doing all the tedious, ordinary things that bands do -- soundchecking, hanging out in the dressing room, doing a photo shoot, checking the merch table, eating, watching TV and performing the show itself. It's a little disturbing. You don't really think about a band this intense and spiritually-driven killing time watching the tube, but it proves, if nothing else, that they're just regular people.

The DVD is obviously a must for longtime 16 Horsepower fans, and makes pretty compelling viewing for people who are discovering them belatedly, through Woven Hand. It's a bit long -- most people won't watch it in one sitting -- but there are very few sections that aren't worth watching once or twice. Highly recommended.

-- Jennifer Kelly