Brooklyn-based Woods is a name that’s become synonymous with earthy, psychedelic folk. Over the years, they’ve also evolved into a veritable cottage industry for producing and promoting fantastic music across a wide array of genres through their own record label, Woodsist. From Irish balladeers like guitar-slinger Cian Nugent to New England favorites like Quilt and Herbcraft, the collective has succeeded over the years in exploring new aural territory, for both artists and listeners.
That free-spirited nature shines through in the single from the band’s upcoming album, City Sun Eater in the River of Light. “Sun City Creeps” is a strange amalgam of Jeremy Earl’s loose-yet-present style of songwriting and fuzz-driven guitars whose sounds and shapes are rooted in Ethio-jazz as much as they are a continuation of 2014’s psych folk touchstone With Light and With Love.
Sultry horns and cumbia-like rhythm drive the backbeat – something at once entirely fresh and new, yet entirely familiar within the context of the idioms that Woods operates out of. Indeed, this new album promises to flex serious muscle. If “Sun City Creeps” is an indication of Woods using their expansive musical vocabulary to tackle a new dialect of the language, we ought to keep listening: the allure of their accent is irresistable.