During playback he found himself favoring the falsetto and began elevating it in the mix. Working solo on proto-Woods material in the mid-’00s, he used to record two separate vocal parts, singing in a standard register and falsetto. ![]() Earl conveys his audience into distant realms physical and astral - and he rides shotgun the whole way.Īnd Woods’ music is as defiantly intimate as Earl’s extra-band endeavors. Fuck It Tapes released cassettes in extremely limited runs before such a thing was even a nano-trend and Woodsist presses limited LPs. Woodsist Fest maxes out at around a half-dozen bands and 300 fans there is no VIP seating, no green room, no extravagant staging. Progenitors like Wilco and My Morning Jacket are similarly generative and also corral their fanbases into curated, cultivated environments. With a degree of industry and intention rare among post-millennial indie-rock bands, Earl et al have amassed a decade’s worth of shows, tours, festivals, and songs, plus their attendant artwork and artifacts on vinyl, cassette, CD and digital, plus a nexus of comrades, fans and collaborators. It all amounts to the text and the practice of a sort of Woodsist cosmology, a tiny worldview. The marvelous natural setting colors the ambiance as much as the lineup, which centers on bands from the Woodsist label - Real Estate, White Fence, Kevin Morby, the Fresh and Onlys - and others in their orbit, like Angel Olsen, Foxygen, and Michael Hurley. ![]() A year later, after a memorable gig at the Henry Miller Memorial Library outside Monterey, California, Earl relocated the event, and every summer since, Woodsist Festival has sprouted among Big Sur’s coastal redwoods and rhododendrons for a day or two (and occasionally reappears further south, in Joshua Tree, for a desert-bound incarnation in the fall). It started 2009 as a casual get-together in the backyard of Rear House, the band’s shared home in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Earl, who studied visual art at SUNY Purchase, designs much of Woodsist’s cover art and merch in a rustic, hand-painted style, heavy on all-seeing eyes and impassive skulls and other mystical iconography.Īnd there’s Woodsist Festival, which all too briefly sets the music and its audience together in a slice of sylvan paradise. Before he launched Woodsist, Earl’s Fuck It Tapes presaged today’s cassette fetish by more than a decade. ![]() In the late ’00s, Woodist was home to Kurt Vile and Thee Oh Sees more recently, the label released albums by folk-rock troubadour Cian Nugent, Maine-based electro-psych outfit Herbcraft, and Northwest angst-pop trio the Woolen Men. Each Woods album is released by Earl’s record label, Woodsist, which has long nurtured musicians of a certain restless bent. Woods’ ninth album, City Sun Eater In The River of Light, is perhaps their best, distilling their sanguine take on timeless rock ‘n’ roll.īut Woods are also the gateway into a miniature world, an ecosystem of the band’s own devising. ![]() It is that, sure, and Woods’ music is rich - alternately squalling and calming, earthy and cosmic, propelled primarily by Jeremy Earl’s boyish voice, mercurial guitar, and sophisticated songwriting, complemented by multi-instrumentalist/producer Jarvis Taveniere and a rotating cast of musicians. Spend enough time with Woods and eventually the band becomes more than a band.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |