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Spawn of the holy Meneguar are The Woods and their completely rad debut. Originally put out on The Woods' own Jeremy Earl's Fuck It Tapes label as a double c20 near the end of '05, Release the Bats has now done it up as a proper CD. Sometimes, the four short sides seem like an advantage, giving the short album a distinct pacing and more proper feel but others I just feel like I'm flipping stuff over too much too often. The sound quality here sucks but the scratchy cassettes fit this band perfectly. I can only hope that the Release the Bats CD doesn't clean it up a terrible amount. The album founded mostly in acoustic guitar-led folkiness with the duo laying down massive vocal hook after massive vocal hook in reedy falsetto but the influence of Fuck It is evident: the pop songs are visited frequently by noise, tape trickery, massive psych guitar, retarded classic rock soloing, glockenspiel and, on one occasion, larynx-ruining hardcore vocals. The lyrics here deal with the oft-trodden grounds of love and loss but the boys' singing voices give them an abstract feel; as if you have no idea what they're singing about even though you know exactly what's going down. All the songs here have any extremely unified feel, making discussing them individually useless. An album doesn't have to be varied to be great. Didn't Loveless teach you that?

The Woods at Amazon & Insound