A little over a month ago, Woods played a show in New York with Ducktails, White Fence and Widowspeak. Lucky for us, Ian Perlman was there to take video while nyctaper covered the audio. "Blood Dries Darker" is the first of three released from the show, and captures the fervent energy and fantastic sound that makes a Woods show such a great band. --Jheri Evans, Get Off The Coast
"Blood Dries Darker" is from last year's At Echo Lake, which is available now from Woodsist; watch "Find Them Empty" and "Rain On"
[image by Max Capacity]
In celebration of one full year of Altered Zones, we're going back to where we began and observing our very favorite tracks of 2011 thus far. We pulled together all of AZ's contributing blogs' top picks and assembled a 25-song list of cuts that can't missed. --Ric Leichtung, Altered Zones
Balam Acab: "Oh, Why"
Bill Callahan: "Baby's Breath"
Clams Casino: "I'm God (Instrumental)"
Devin Gary & Ross: "Four Corners"
Dirty Beaches: "Lord Knows Best"
Ford & Lopatin: "Emergency Room"
Gang Gang Dance: "Glass Jar"
Grimes: "Vanessa"
Holy Other: "With U"
Iceage: "White Rune"
John Maus: "Believer"
Julian Lynch: "Terra"
LA Vampires Goes Ital: "Streetwise"
Light Asylum: "Dark Allies"
Matthewdavid: "Like You Mean It"
Panda Bear: "Alsatian Darn"
Peaking Lights: "Tiger Eyes (Laid Back)"
Protect-U: "U-Uno"
Pure X: "Don't Wanna Live, Don't Wanna Die"
Purity Ring: "Loftcries"
Puro Instinct: "Stilyagi"
Sic Alps: "Do You Want To Give $$?"
Sleep ∞ Over: "Casual Diamond"
The Weeknd: "The Morning"
Woods: "Pushing Onlys"
By Jenn Pelly
Woods' impeccably timed sixth record, Sun & Shade, rivals many of the warm '60s classics they’ve been channeling since 2005. Crisp folk ballads, extended psych-burners, and sad, incisive pop lyrics-- some of frontman Jeremy Earl’s most thoughtful and audible to date-- float between the album's titular tropes: "sun" for pop, "shade" for the rest. Decked in clean reverb, mid-tempo opener “Pushing Onlys” offers steady rays of beaming folk-rock, with Earl singing about a new day and the slipping of time. There are images of tattered clothes and crystal skies, and you can practically see a tire swing swaying to the slow thump of the drum in some distant and invincible summertime utopia. The forward-moving rocker “Any Other Day” is, similarly, all blue skies, which makes sense: Sun & Shade is the first Woods album recorded at the hidden Woodsist HQ in tiny, wooded, Warwick, NY.
“Out of the Eye” is a seven-minute piece of noisy but meditative motorik improv, underpinned by a steady guitar drone. The slower, stripped down-folk of “Be All Be Easy” and “Wouldn’t Waste” is quiet and pristine, and a testament to the band’s improved home-fi technique. While we’ve recently witnessed a mass indie exodus from bedroom to studio, Woods have simply gotten better at home recording.
The record’s best track, “Who Do I Think I Am?,” recalls the campfire pop of the band's earliest recordings, albeit cloaked in the introspective thought trap of a dark baladeer. Earl delivers a lonesome, country-tinged narrative with '50s boy-pop charm, perpetually calling himself out for blaming his sorrow on someone else. Over acoustic strums and subtle, electric guitar shine, Earl thinks out loud and walks alone, singing, “Who am I to be runnin' around,/ puttin' anyone but my own self down?” Whether the sentiment is fictional or not, it's striking to hear the ever-mysterious Earl sing something so gut-wrenchingly open and palpably desperate. For all the song’s self-doubt-- and all the band's celestial psych and neo-hippie vibes-- it’s refreshing to hear a band that’s not at war with its own identity.
Get the Sun and Shade LP from Woodsist, or downoad it from iTunes
On June 14th, the flora-friendly city-slickers of New York folk-rock quartet Woods will release their 6th full-length album, Sun & Shade, unto the world. Their first LP to be produced at Woodsist's rural headquarters in Warwick, NY, where Woods frontman and labelhead Jeremy Earl now resides, Sun & Shade was recorded between Winter 2010 and Winter 2011 with help from Glenn Donaldson of Skygreen Leapards and Art Museums, also of the Woodsist roster. Album single "Pushing Onlys," a bittersweet, pentatonic guitar-rock revery, has us feeling about as nostalgic as Jeremy Earl is waxing in the lyrics. Nostalgic for what, though? A quieter, greener life that we've never really lived? Bittersweet, pentatonic guitar rock from 2009/2010? So easy to feel, so hard to explain. --Emilie Friedlander, Altered Zones
Sun & Shade is out June 14th via Woodsist. Peep the album art above.
[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"
New York folk family band Woods will be going on tour with hypnagogist Ducktails starting early February. Woods will be traveling as a 3-piece, playing mostly acoustic and previewing some new songs off of their next LP due later this year. Ducktails will be supporting with their latest Woodsist effort, Ducktails III: Arcade Dynamics, coming out next week. --Ric Leichtung, Altered Zones
MP3: Ducktails: "Hamilton Road"
02-02 Burlington, VT - Monkey House *
02-03 Portland, ME - Apohadion *
02-04 New York, NY - Monster Island Basement *
02-07 Philadelphia, PA - Chapel at First Unitarian Church *
02-08 Baltimore, MD - Golden West *
* w/ Ducktails
03-14 Hare & Hounds - Birmingham
03-15 The Deaf Institute - Manchester
03-16 Bush Hall - London
03-17 La Maison des Musiques - Brussels
03-18 Cafe de la Danse - Paris
03-19 Klub Radar @ Tivoli - Utrecht
03-20 Vera - Groningen
03-21 Comet Club - Berlin
03-22 Molotow - Hamburg
03-23 Loppen - Copenhagen
03-24 Pusterviksbaren - Gothenburg
03-35 Revolver - Oslo
03-26 Club What We Do Is Secret @ Strand - Stockholm
03-27 Kuudes Linja - Helsinki
Chūbu region, Honshū, Japan (img credit= Matt Mondanile)
By Jenn Pelly
Long a breeding ground for J-Pop and hi-fi noise, Japan would seem, at first glance, an unlikely destination for lo-fi pop bands from the American Northeast. But that’s where Real Estate and Woods went last month, following an invitation by Tokyo promotion group Contrarede and indie label Plancha. In addition to eating udon and gazing at Mount Fuji, the bands played 300-capacity rock clubs in Tokyo and Osaka, visited records stores that had Underwater Peoples releases on display, and stumbled into a bar where a DJ was spinning Matrix Metals at 2 a.m. Intrigued by Tokyo’s indie culture, AZ caught up with Real Estate drummer Etienne Duguay at his home, Brooklyn DIY space Market Hotel, to talk Japan and time travel. Then we dialed guitarist Matt Mondanile-- a few hours before he moved to Greenpoint from Ridgewood, NJ-- for more on the trip, and some words about his forthcoming Ducktails record on Woodsist.
AZ: What prompted the trip, and how did you hook up with your tour guides?
Matt: This small label in Japan called Plancha, a division of a bigger label called Art Union, offered to put out the Real Estate and Woods records over there, and they asked us to tour there together. This guy Oshi put them out. He did a couple of other things too, like a record by Dustin Wong from Ponytail. This guy Tak runs a promotional company called Contrarede; he drove us around and organized the shows.
Etienne: Oshi was the man. A lot of bands come through with Tak. Right after us was the Bon Iver band. They’re also bringing Deerhunter, Ariel Pink and Blonde Redhead over.
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