Altered Zones

[Woods' Jarvis Taveniere and Jeremy Earl at Rear House, Brooklyn, NY]

By Jenn Pelly

It would be almost impossible to find 229 Bushwick Avenue if it weren't for the flashy, neon awning of the bodega next door. Past the front entrance of this non-descript, East Williamsburg tenement building and down a narrow, paint-chipped hall, a back door opens to a hidden courtyard littered with dirty snow and garbage bags, a ragged couch, a broken stove. Seven paces further, up a cement staircase, is Rear House, home to the recording studio Woods drummer Jarvis Taveniere started in 2007. A "Recorded at Rear House" label has since become a seal of quality for fans of ramshackle indie pop à la Woodsist and Captured Tracks.

It's a Monday evening in early January; outside Rear House, the air is strangely silent. No telling if the doorbell works; nothing about Rear House looks like it's been updated since 1970. Inside, the Vivian Girls/Woods garage-pop collaboration The Babies is tracking handclaps, finishing up a B-side for a 7" on L.A. label Teenage Teardrops. Their debut full-length, also recorded at Rear House last year, drops February 8th on Shrimper.

Up on the second floor, down a dark, tapestry-clad hall, Jarvis mans the board in his tiny production room: an 8 x 8-foot glorified closet that used to be his bedroom. He sits at his desk, within arm's reach of the tape machine to his left, a collection of 33 1/3 books on a tiny bookshelf to his right, and the '60s lipstick-red Farfisa organ behind him (an eBay gem). Nearby, Woods/Babies guitarist Kevin Morby, who sleeps in the bedroom next door, picks at an acoustic guitar.

MP3: Woods: "Blood Dries Darker"