is. To gain access
pPIFfPVlWersity of a modern
metropolis, one leaves certain trin
kets at its gate: the short walk, unblemished
greenspace, guaranteed silence and so forth.
It's easy to imagine that with the widening
of the personal palate to make room for the
unchecked ocean of implausible perspec
tives and globally converging possibilities,
the self is compressed, deals with it, and
soldiers forward. The music that Brooklyn
band Woods has been feverishly producing—
five full-lengths in five years, plus sundry
seven-inches and such—speaks of that com
pressed self, attempting to somehow expand
inwardly. Their music is highly evocative, and
of nothing modern. Often acoustic, intimate
and soft-hearted, the songwriting/produc
tion duo of Jeremy Earl and Jarvis laveniere
(respectively) often has seemed to seek sol
ace from tne ruckus.
"The stuff we recorded in Brooklyn," says
Taveniere, speaking to Flagpole after hopping
off at a subway stop, "especially some of
the stuff Jeremy did by himself before I was
really involved, was pretty claustrophobic
sounding."
Taveniere has been busying himself as a
recordist at an impressive rate over the past
few years, producing albums for Real Estate,
Vivian Girls, Ducktails and The Babies in
2011 alone, all at his (former) home studio,
Rear House. But for Sun and Shade, the new
est Woods release, the band split town alto
gether, heading to the rural north of upstate
New York, where Earl recently set up a home.
"We've been collecting recording equip
ment over the past few years. So, we just put
it all in the van, and I went up with him for
a few weeks," says Taveniere. "We kinda just
hang around and listen to records, and when
inspiration strikes, we write and record kind
of at the same time, for a lot of it. Jeremy
does write songs kind of constantly, so we
did aet together and record those, but a lot
of it's just letting ideas happen and letting
the inspiration come.
"We just -sake up. make coffee and start
recording. When we recorded in the city, we
Sun dnd Shinedoes have that apt kind of
brightness, ectfpsing the lo-fi tag the band
has been shouldered with. While it's true the
album was recorded casually and on analog
equipment, there are genuinely crystal-clear
moments of folk-pop hitmaking (among a
certain sect of listener, naturally) that are,
to be fair, offset by some scuzzy soloing, to
say nothing of the tape manipulation cour
tesy of noise archivist G. Lucas Crane.
"He plays cassettes," says Taveniere. "He
spent the last decade of his life kind of walk
ing around the world recording things on
cassette tapes, and then he has a DJ setup
with cassettes instead of record players. He
has tapes for certain songs—someone play
ing a bell in the key of A, stuff like that."
While bassist Kevin Morby—also of The
Babies—holds it down live, the rest of the
noises heard therein are entirely the respon
sibility of Earl and Taveniere. "Me and Jeremy
do most of the recording, just the two of us,
and, on record, I'm kind of just in charge of
recording and mostly guitar," says Taveniere.
"For live, somehow I get bumped over to
drums, 'cos that's what we've got, you know?
We need someone to play drun.',, so that's
me. I'm not really a multi-instrumentalist
as in 'I'm good at all these instruments,' it's
just... I can wing it."
The freedom of free form recording and
the bliss of matching their pastoral inner
selves to their newfound surroundings
appears to have liberated the group in the
best way possible. But there is such a thing
as too much freedom.
"Lucas? Haven't seen him in months;
I don't know if I'll see him again, ever,"
Taveniere remarks when asked about his
bandmate's goings-on. "He's lost in Berlin or
something. No one's heard from him, so...
that's what he's doing."
Jeff Tobias
( T
WHO: Woods, Jovontaes
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