About this item

“Woods’ brand of pop shamanism has undergone several gradual transformations over their past few albums, but on With Light and With Love, the tinkering reveals an expanded sonic palette that includes singing saw, heavier emphasis on percussion, and a saloon piano that sounds like it was rescued from a flooded basement. Distinct from both the stoned volk of their earliest recordings and the kraut-y dalliances of more recent fare, With Light and With Love showcases a more sophisticated brand of contemporary drug music that owes more to Magical Mystery Tour than motorik.

“If you’ve ever thought of Woods as a pop group comprised of weirdos, or a weirdo band that happens to excel at playing pop songs almost in spite of itself, With Light and With Love provides a corrective in the form of songs that show these two elements as natural, inextricable bedfellows. Throughout the album, vocals are frequently emitted through Leslie speakers and guitars perform one-string ragas like Sandy Bull reared on shoegaze and skate videos. With Light and With Love is an album of deeply psychedelic, deeply satisfying songs for a new age of searchers, of Don Juan and Animal Chin alike.” - James Toth.

• Features guests Tim Presley (White Fence) on slide guitar and Jonathan Rado (Foxygen) on organ.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Woods started life as a collective, running a label, putting on gigs, and releasing home-spun music. Based in Brooklyn but looking West to late 60s /early 70s California, they've arrived here on their sixth album with a rich, hazy, classic vibe, taking in Dylan and The Band, The Byrds, and ‘White Album’ era Beatles . The results are country / folk / psych-tinged gold. With each record Woods have become less ragged, less lo-fi and less experimental, but main man Jeremy Earl has always had a way with heart-rending melodies, and recording, at last, in a proper studio has inspired his best collection yet. There's a groove here, washes of Hammond, pedal-steel and jangling guitars, warming words of hope and longing, perfectly illustrated in the hymn-like “New Light”. But it's the nine minute title track that truly entrances. A freak-out jam and pop song in one, it's an “Eight Miles High” for the 21st century.

TRACK LISTING

1. Shepherd
2. Shining
3. With Light And With Love
4. Moving To The Left
5. New Light
6. Leaves Like Glass
7. Twin Steps
8. Full Moon
9. Only The Lonely
10. Feather Man