With a title like At Echo Lake the fifth album from New York’s Woods intimates a modern rock aesthetic fully informed by historical manifestations of teenage along with a concomitant feel for the specifics of time and place. The distance between 2007’s At Rear House and 2010’s At Echo Lake may at first seem only semantic but it more properly represents a move from a kind of informal back porch jam ethos to a fully-committed vision of the infinite possibilities of group playing. Over the past few years Woods have established themselves as an anomaly in a world of freaks. They were an odd proposition even in the outré company of vocalist/guitarist/label owner Jeremy Earl’s Woodsist roster, perpetually out of time, committed to songsmanship in an age of noise, drone and improvisation, to extended soloing, oblique instrumentals and the usurping use of tapes and F/X in an age of dead-end singer-songwriters. Recent live shows have seen them best confuse the two, playing beautifully-constructed songs torn apart by fuzztone jams and odd electronics. At Echo Lake feels like a diamond-sharp distillation of the turbulent power of their live shows, in much the same way that The Grateful Dead’s “Dark Star” single amplified and engulfed the planetary aspect of their improvised takes. Some of the material here – the opening “Blood Dries Darker”, the euphoric “Mornin’ Time” – is so lush that lesser brains would’ve succumbed to the appeal of strings and horns but At Echo Lake is more Fifth Dimension than Notorious Byrd Brothers, nowhere more so than on “From The Horn”, a track that is as beautiful in its assault on form as “Eight Miles High” or Swell Maps’ “Midget Submarines”. But despite the instrumental innovation that the album heralds – G. Lucas Cranes’ psychedelic tapework on “Suffering Season”, guest musician Matthew Valentine’s harmonica and modified banjo/sitar on “Time Fading Lines” – At Echo Lake is all about the vocals. Woods’ secret weapon is the quality of Earl’s voice, osmosing the naive style of Jad Fair, Jonathan Richman and Neil Young while re-thinking it as a discipline and a tradition. Here he is singing at the peak of his powers, in a high soulful style that is bolstered by heavenly arrangements of backing vocals. At Echo Lake feels like the transmission point for teenage garage from the past to the future. Deformed by contemporary experiments, bolstered by magical traditions from the past, it’s the sound of now, right here, At Echo Lake.

With a title like At Echo Lake the fifth album from New York’s Woods intimates a modern rock aesthetic fully informed by historical manifestations of teenage along with a concomitant feel for the specifics of time and place. The distance between 2007’s At Rear House and 2010’s At Echo Lake may at first seem only semantic but it more properly represents a move from a kind of informal back porch jam ethos to a fully-committed vision of the infinite possibilities of group playing. Over the past few years Woods have established themselves as an anomaly in a world of freaks. They were an odd proposition even in the outré company of vocalist/guitarist/label owner Jeremy Earl’s Woodsist roster, perpetually out of time, committed to songsmanship in an age of noise, drone and improvisation, to extended soloing, oblique instrumentals and the usurping use of tapes and F/X in an age of dead-end singer-songwriters. Recent live shows have seen them best confuse the two, playing beautifully-constructed songs torn apart by fuzztone jams and odd electronics. At Echo Lake feels like a diamond-sharp distillation of the turbulent power of their live shows, in much the same way that The Grateful Dead’s “Dark Star” single amplified and engulfed the planetary aspect of their improvised takes. Some of the material here – the opening “Blood Dries Darker”, the euphoric “Mornin’ Time” – is so lush that lesser brains would’ve succumbed to the appeal of strings and horns but At Echo Lake is more Fifth Dimension than Notorious Byrd Brothers, nowhere more so than on “From The Horn”, a track that is as beautiful in its assault on form as “Eight Miles High” or Swell Maps’ “Midget Submarines”. But despite the instrumental innovation that the album heralds – G. Lucas Cranes’ psychedelic tapework on “Suffering Season”, guest musician Matthew Valentine’s harmonica and modified banjo/sitar on “Time Fading Lines” – At Echo Lake is all about the vocals. Woods’ secret weapon is the quality of Earl’s voice, osmosing the naive style of Jad Fair, Jonathan Richman and Neil Young while re-thinking it as a discipline and a tradition. Here he is singing at the peak of his powers, in a high soulful style that is bolstered by heavenly arrangements of backing vocals. At Echo Lake feels like the transmission point for teenage garage from the past to the future. Deformed by contemporary experiments, bolstered by magical traditions from the past, it’s the sound of now, right here, At Echo Lake.

Brand new EP from the current greatest live band on the planet. This one expands on the more extended aspect of the group’s recent live set, with a long A-side that dissolves from collage and high lonesome song into vectors of intuitive string think that are as beautiful as any ’72 Dead set. The flip captures two shorter tracks straight out of the teenage garage. Fantastic. Bring on the LP.

Wild de-programming/subliminal hypnosis piece from Crane aka Non-Horse aka one quarter of Woods. Commissioned as a piece that would cure cosmic dread and the ‘fear of infinity’ aka apeirophobia as part of a series of ‘hypno tapes’ that use subliminals and extreme sound to re-wire your brain, this is one of Crane’s weirdest sides, with clattering drone works for strings and assorted junk that sounds like Tony Conrad leading The Velvets through a Ludlow Street raga recorded straight to tape while mutated vocal flicker backwards, float in the distance and mutate into choirs of lonely foghorns in a way that is supremely disorientating. Dunno if I’m feeling any better about infinity afterwards, but this particular take on the concept of eternal music sure makes me feel ‘good’. 

“Sixth studio album from Woods sees them further transition from back porch rural folk rock to their current fully developed sound w/finely crafted songs with enough elasticity to stretch out into extended jams on the bandstand. Sun And Shade is classic Woods but still represents a development in their psychedelic pop/garage rock song writing. When At Echo Lake came out VT described it as “more Fifth Dimension than Notorious Byrd Brothers” and in that sense this feels closer to Younger Than Yesterday – the perfect document of their form. Woods in the studio is quite different a proposition to Woods live. Whereas live they are happy to stretch out into wild psychedelic jams, in the studio it is all about formulating classic songs, with a focus on melody and those amazing vocals. It’s not surprising given the personnel involved. Woods the studio group are predominantly the duo of Jeremy Earl and Jarvis Taveniere (augmented on this occasion by Glenn Donaldson of Skygreen Leopards/Art Museums et al) whereas live sees the addition of G.Lucas Crane on tape loops, vocals and FX and Kevin Morby on bass, guitar and drums. On this record Woods display their craft across ten songs and two radical instrumentals (think “September with Pete”) that are some of the album’s highlights. Opener “Pushing Onlys” - already a staple of the live set - is the perfect articulation of the Woods sound, setting psychedelic pop dreamscapes to a garage infused pulsating drive. There are almost too many highlights to describe but “Any Other Day” is a stand-out with its Byrds-like chorus and a riveting/phasing guitar sound straight off “Wasn’t Born To Follow”. It closes with these delightful drum fills that will bring a smile to anyone with a pulse. The cornerstone of the Woods sound is still Jeremy Earl’s sublime, infectious vocals (whether solo or multi-tracked) with a euphoric aspect that gets me every time. Sun And Shade includes some more tender and introspective moments that take his vocals to a whole new level. The delivery on the sublimely personal “Wouldn’t Waste” and “Who Do I Think I Am?” features some of the finest psychedelic vocals I’ve heard, with a softness of touch comparable to Arthur Lee’s performances on “Orange Skies” and “The Castle” on Da Capo. Other highlights include the Small Faces-sounding psychedelic pop of “What Faces The Sheet” and the percussion driven ballad of “White Out” with its almost calypso guitar.  But the two tracks that really set this apart as the definitive Woods release are the long instrumentals, “Out Of The Eye” and “Sol Y Sombra”. “Out Of The Eye” comes across as a kind of pop-infused krautrock jam w/a dose of Neu circa “Hallogallo” complete with motoric drumming and tightly compressed wah-wah chords. This is the only track to feature G.Lucas Crane of the ‘live’ Woods outfit and his box of tricks greatly enhances this uniquely odd space jam. There’s a moment where Jeremy Earl breaks into a flurry of notes as if impersonating the Byrds attempt to mimic the sound of Coltrane’s sax at the start of “Eight Miles High”. Woods are one of the greatest contemporary live acts and this sounds more like their live set, leaving me salivating for the UK Autumn tour. “Sol Y Sombra” is equally sublime, a percussion driven raga evoking the type of organic sounds and vibes that Jeremy Earl has added brilliantly to recent Matthew Valentine albums. Not as wildly psychedelic as some of MV’s “Environments”, this retains the Woods’s penchant for song and melody and therefore reminds me of some of the output of The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band.
Overall, this is a classic Woods album, with those two long jams and the further perfection of Jeremy Earl’s vocal pretty much sealing the deal. I have always really liked Jeremy’s artwork and this might just be his best yet.  It’s Woods. It’s fucking genius and I highly recommended it.” – Andrew Ross. 

Great new self-released limited edition EP from Matt Mondanile on his own New Images imprint. The version of one of his best loved tracks, “Killin The Vibe” that opens the set is a perfect/primitive Beach Boys style slice of dream pop with angelic west coast backing vocals and a squelchy beatbox bottom end and features contributions from Panda Bear, Dent May and Jarvis Taveniere of Woods. Two new tracks, “Sit Around With Ya” and “Couch Surfer” add to the feel of languorous suburban ennui while a final live take on “Killin The Vibe” cut with The Spectrals in Leeds in 2010 reverses the whole deal into the garage. 

Feral trumpet/drums exchange, torn from the hearts of James Toth aka Wooden Wand and Lucas ‘Bones' Crane. Crane's trumpet playing sounds a little like Cosey Fanni Tutti or Pete Nolan playing Cherry-styled bugle calls and Dixon-spits with a sad, martial force while Toth's drumming style works the kind of horizontal planes previously levelled by Denis Charles into new realms of punk. Free fucking folk. Recommended. Limited edition of 150 copies w/liners by, ulp, Carlos Castaneda...

Stunning new CD from the duo of Matthew Valentine and Erika Elder with a revolving cast of guest players that includes Mick Flower (Vibracathedral Orchestra/Flower-Corsano et al), Doc Dunn, Coot Moon, Asa Irons, Jeremy Earl (Woods), John Moloney (Sunburned), Rafi Bookstaber (Aswara et al), Willie Lane and J Mascis (Dinosaur Jr). Space Homestead feels like the ultimate pulling-together of a buncha conceptual threads that have run through recent MV sides, with a mix of  feels and production styles that best showcases the range of their vision. There are haunting feedback/chorale duos for twin lap steels that mix Kraut drones with the pointillist kosmische of Scorces, acoustic barn-burners with MV’s vocals as narcoleptic and F/X dosed as anything on Spacemen 3’s Perfect Prescription, harmonica/jug stomps and hollers and a buncha massively extended jams that trade rhythmic confusion for the feel of laminal environments that confuse live jams with brain-boggling studio/tape creations. Indeed, some of the heaviest tracks – “Sweet Sure Gone”, “Porchlight>Leaves” – are credited as being recorded across several studios and several time periods, giving the set a parallel Anthem Of The Sun feel, with a sidereal production style that blends hallucinatory studio spectra with bandstand rocking jams. Best of all is MV gets plenty of solo space and by this point the arc of his trails lead all the way to a re-formulation of fuzz that owes as much to Sonny Sharrock, Ray Russell and Masayuki Takayanagi as it does to Crazy Horse and Quicksilver Messenger Service. Space Homestead feels like the apex of the MV trip and is very highly recommended!

Stunning new LP from the duo of Matthew Valentine and Erika Elder with a revolving cast of guest players that includes Mick Flower (Vibracathedral Orchestra/Flower-Corsano et al), Doc Dunn, Coot Moon, Asa Irons, Jeremy Earl (Woods), John Moloney (Sunburned), Rafi Bookstaber (Aswara et al), Willie Lane and J Mascis (Dinosaur Jr). Space Homestead feels like the ultimate pulling-together of a buncha conceptual threads that have run through recent MV sides, with a mix of atmospheres and production styles that best showcase the range and depth of the duo’s vision. There are haunting feedback/choralse scored for twin lap steels that mix Kraut drones with the pointillist kosmische of Scorces, acoustic barn-burners with vocals that are as narcoleptic and F/X dosed as anything on Spacemen 3’s Perfect Prescription, harmonica/jug band stomps and hollers and a buncha massively extended jams that trade rhythmic confusion for the feel of laminal environments that confuse live jams with brain-boggling studio/tape creations. Indeed, some of the heaviest tracks – “Sweet Sure Gone”, “Porchlight>Leaves” – are credited as being recorded across several studios and several time periods, giving the set a parallel Anthem Of The Sun feel, with a sidereal production style that blends hallucinatory studio spectra with bandstand rocking live jams. Best of all, MV gets plenty of solo space and by this point the arc of his trails lead all the way to a re-formulation of fuzz that owes as much to Sonny Sharrock, Ray Russell and Masayuki Takayanagi as it does to Crazy Horse and Quicksilver Messenger Service. Space Homestead feels like the apex of the MV trip to date and is very highly recommended!