MP3: Woods-Rain on
Woods are on the trendy Woodsist* label (Vivian Girls, Wavves) and 'Rain On' is from their new record Songs of Shame. The album is gorgeous and uncanny. It's mostly tape hiss folk, but with the odd grungetacular assault of early Mercury Rev guitar. There's no pinning down what makes it so wonderful. I'll just say the band have managed to tap into the spirit vaults of dream America, where one can sit out on a creaky porch at dusk to watch human-sized crickets square dancing with skeletons in the dusty fields.
Rain on might refer to Neil Young with a rhyming couplet containing the words "setting sun" and "damage done". Lead singer Jeremy Earl sings in Young's odd falsetto too, though he's perhaps a little closer to Jonathan Donohoe in his more spooked choirboy moments. I really do not want to find out much about Woods, because I'm sure it'll wreck the illusion.
*Edit: Just found out Jeremy from Woods runs the label - hence the name. Dur.
17 comments:
Songs of Shame is a wonderful album. spent a whole weekend, directly after purhcase, listening solely to it and the Papercuts LP.
a previous post-punky/indie incarnation of Woods, Meneguar (no, not Menomena!) is pretty good. they were always interested in folk but they made a really good punky band as well.
wrote about them both here - http://hardcorefornerds.tumblr.com/tagged/woods
sorry, didn't read your last line there!
I'm interested in checking out their earlier releases, though. there's quite a few - a s/t album and an ep or two I think. they're all on eMusic.
hey don't worry gabba. i'd be intrigued to find out about the early stuff too. I'm just worried i'll happen across an interview with them and discover they are a bunch of surly smart alecs, cos I read somewhere they are from Brooklyn. Shallow, I know. But that's surely not possible with music like this.
seem ok from the interviews I've read.Great album alright.
I have At Rear House too which is cool but I've no idea when it was made or anything. A Google search would probably help but sometimes you just have to let things be found out naturally eh?I think Gorilla vs Bear has a hard-on for Woods which is how I discivered them anyhoo.Dum Dum Girls too.
gonna see if i can buy one of their albums online. its about time i threw a bit of money back into the system seeing as i am not gig-going this summer.
NOT gig-going? Well, you went to Primavera so I guess you've done your time alright.
Yer man Jeremy runs that "trendy Woodsist label"....
Haha didn't know that and probably never would. See that's what I'm like, I'm shit on details.
similarly in love with that song, and with similar anxiety. i dont know what it is these days but songs like that and for example 'gila' by beach house really catch a hold of me but i never have any clue as to their lasting potential. Will i be thinking of this music a year from now? There are very few of the many many albums i've liked over the last few years that i revisit all that much
What's interesting to me michael, is do people not come back to records these days because of a drop off in quality or a preponderance in choice of alternatives?
I mean I try to limit myself to what I hear but even so keep finding myself ignoring stuff that's six months old in favour of a new release. In my opinion we are living in disposable times when it comes to music.
there's a connected band called Wooden Wand And The Vanishing Voice - sounds a bit like a Dan Deacon song title - and I'm listening to their song 'Didn't It Rain' right now. it's a 10-minute mostly Tom Waits-style banging instrumental with some freaky guitar, and androgynous singing 7-8 minutes in.
one of my favourite songs on this Woods album is 'September With Pete' though, so I'm digging it.
http://www.emusic.com/album/Wooden-Wand-The-Vanishing-Vo-Gipsy-Freedom-MP3-Download/11442076.html
also: http://www.emusic.com/album/The-Woods-Rain-on-My-Parade-MP3-Download/11101081.html
and
http://www.emusic.com/album/Woods-At-Rear-House-MP3-Download/10991132.html
haven't listened to them yet, but I'm looking forward to doing so.
Well that's the question, it's very hard to know. We very easily laud certain albums as being exceptional after one or two listens, eg AC or grizzly bear. But where is our perspective? Certainly music listeners these days have a far greater pool to choose from, but at what depth do we ever delve into this pool?
My first album was 'bad' and it was on cassette - i know every single second of that album, every pause, what song is coming next, every word.
The percentage of music i listen to on a daily basis is so heavily weighted towards new releases that i dont know who i'm a fan of anymore. Contrast that with a friend of mine who was so excited yesterday at going to see faith no more today in the UK that she was literally pale and barely able to work. Does that level of fanaticism exist anymore, or if it does is it only to be found in pop music, for example, the often dismissed Kings of leon. In ten or 20 years when the world looks back at the music of the 00's who will they be talking about?
Yeah Michael, I think there is an inevitable erosion of thrills the more spoiled for choice we become. I could hoof through a thousand record stores or go to a thousand gigs and still not capture a flake of what made, say, Dookie by Greenday so ridiculously exciting years ago.
Poets talk about it a lot; the need to retain innocence and wonder in a world of overwhelming experience. You have to work at it I guess. Try to listen to something new as if that's what it is...New!
I think people still do really get excited by bands though. It's just bloggers and music nuts have seen so much that this often gets replaced by detached analysis.
E.g. I objectively hung back at a recent animal collective gig and I was amazed at how bat shit excited lots of fans seemed to be. Although, going by blogs the next day you'd swear they were terrible.
gabba-thanks for those links. much appreciated :)
great song. thanks for sharing
mike in va
oh, i am liking this so much. i'm in need of more of your recommendations my man.
thanks mike. Red, more recommendations coming next week. I've heard so much good new stuff recently
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