{"id":1068,"date":"2010-06-16T16:44:22","date_gmt":"2010-06-16T16:44:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thelefortreport.com\/blog\/?p=1068"},"modified":"2018-02-23T13:51:09","modified_gmt":"2018-02-23T21:51:09","slug":"real-vile-woods-and-estates-the-woodsists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelefortreport.com\/blog\/2010-06\/real-vile-woods-and-estates-the-woodsists\/","title":{"rendered":"Real Vile Woods and Estates–The Woodsists"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Comes now a rare, merciful Monday in Clubland, and mercifully close to our clubhouse. So we rambled down to Jensen’s Mainstage, sucked in by the musical black hole to the black box that is the Mainstage, for the Woodsist label’s grove of bands.<\/p>\n

First up was Philly’s Kurt Vile, circa solo acoustic.\u00a0 We’ve witnessed performers who can still pull this act off (Tom Brosseau, wherefore art thou?; and Eef Barzelay, we anxiously await your return with open arms), but after all that has passed in the solo acoustic millennia, you had better bring the creative forces of Genesis (not the band, even with Gabriel–sans horn) or we’ll be outside.\u00a0 Mr. Vile had some clever wordplay and invoked some good guitar sounds, but only occasionally transcended the confines of the genre or space.\u00a0 So off to the sidewalk we went to survey the saturnaliasts and constellations.<\/p>\n

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Next up was Woodsist’s Woods band.\u00a0 We have heard Woods tracks intermittently over the years and, frankly, until now we have never really gotten lost in them.\u00a0 But this night we found ourselves sucked in from the sidewalk for the white pop-noise of Woods.\u00a0 Woods’ latest record, “At Echo Lake,” is their finest yet, with sparkling, dulcet songs aplenty.\u00a0\u00a0 The Woods’ sound combines a psych-folk gestalt (they played Big Sur ferheavensake), with jangly, fuzztone guitars and the fecund falsetto vocals of Jeremy Earl (think love-child born of Neil Young and Graham Nash genetics), and the floor-delivered knob-twiddling and vocoder overlays of wolfman G. Lucas Crane.\u00a0 Tonight we favored the melodies and Earl’s falsetto flourishes, and didn’t mind a bit of Crane’s effects.\u00a0 Next time around, we’ll hope the band sticks to its more-carefully constructed songs, manages to rein in some of Crane’s noise-for-noise’s-sake affectations and skips most of the jammy, instrumental meanderings.\u00a0 Yes, life is too short, and we have avoided the drugs that would have made the repetitive bombast more meaningful (sadly).\u00a0 If they can rein it in a bit, Woods could clear-cut its competition.<\/p>\n

Check em:<\/p>\n