Finding anything on Brooklyn based psychedelic folk rockers Woods before their stellar 2009 LP Songs of Shame is like finding a needle in a Burj Dubai-sized mound of hay. Check out their self-run label: nothing but a recently release 7”. Their subsidiary tape-only sister label: Sold-Out. Every single record store in Portland: nadda. Other than a couple of blog postings, it’s like they didn’t exist before 2009. The only opportunity I’ve seen of finding early Woods stuff was when I caught them on tour this past fall, where I purchased a reissue of their 2007 nine-song S/T album, recorded under the moniker Woods Family Creeps, without any hesitation. One would think that with an initial pressing of 300 and a subsequent one of 1000, copies would be at least somewhat available, but it seems that Woods fans are diehard collectors, leaving a $125 copy on ebay as the only alternative for the tardy listener.
When one listens to the earlier stuff, it’s kind of incredible how much they’ve changed in a span of a couple of years. Where Songs of Shame are an equal-parts blend of catchy pop hooks and psychedelic rock, their Woods Family Creeps stuff is almost entirely composed of mushroom-trip-gone-wrong type of material. The album starts with the cultish opening jam “End to End” which is full of ritualistic chants and spidery guitars that sends shivers down your spine before a 1812 Overture-like audio assault ends the two and a half minute track. The next song, arguably the most interesting in the bunch, “Creeps Collage” has a sound that is true to its name. Featuring a collection of 30-45 second snippets of recordings — ranging from full-on experimental to soothing acoustic folk — smashed together and lumped as a single track, it’s something you hardly ever see outside of a Girl Talk album.
Contrary to the eerie surrounding tracks, the A-side’s third song “Twisted Tongue” pleasant sounding — dare I say sweet — melody could have easily been considered an outtake or B-side to Songs of Shame. Coming in at just over two minutes, the track is a short reprieve from the haunting landscape set by the rest of A-side. Prominently featuring Jeremy Earl falsetto voice (and harmonizing nonetheless!), the track is home to such lyrical gems as “trade your lover for another / lover / you’ve been told you are a mother / fucker” and some other stuff that would appease the apostate youth (“oh you got to run from the fallen son / you got a twisted tongue”).
The B-side continues the mood set by its flip-side counter part. The opener “Howling on Howling” is almost a mirror image of “End to End” with one of the most disturbing Kum Bay Ya circles I’ve ever listened to. With the lo-fi recording method and the constant tape hiss present, it makes you feel as if you are more overhearing intimate bedroom takes rather than bearing witness to a finished product. Maybe this “reading somebody else’s diary without permission” feeling is what makes listening to Woods Family Creeps so, for lack of a better word, creepy. Maybe this ultra-private feel to Woods’s past records is what makes them so damn hard to find; they’re meant to not be heard by a mass audience. This is good for the band’s allure, bad news for the hordes of fans that are thirsty for a full discography of material.
Here are a couple of tracks from the LP to give you a taste of the pre-Songs of Shame Woods. The first two I would say are atypical examples (leaps and bounds more pop than most of the tracks), while the final one, “Sleep Sleep Sleep”, is more representative of the album as a whole.
Woods // End to End
Woods // Twisted Tongue
Woods // Sleep Sleep Sleep
