The Night Doesn’t Last That Long

I saw WOODS (or Woods Family Creeps or whatever moniker they're going under these days) play at Northsix the Music Hall of Williamsburg on Friday. I found out about them via shitgaze wunderkind Wavves, for whom they opened this summer and while not a huge fan, they're fun enough that you don't really need to twist my arm to get me to go. Their sound is a bit hard to describe. Are they freak folk? Indie? Jam? Who knows. There's definitely a bit of a rustic twang to them, but at the same time one member is consigned entirely to operating a rather tech-y set of pedals, mini-synths and tape-based samplers - all the while yelling into a headset hacked to work as a microphone.

One of the more charming aspects of the show was when they called out their opening band (Real Estate) for an eight-man rendition of Blind Melon's “No Rain” with WOODS' vocalist on drums and Real Estate's bassist on vox. In fact, much like the bottle of Maker's Mark the band passed around between songs, the non-techbox members all had a go at one anothers' instruments during the course of the show. megaova managed to capture the event on their iPhone and post it here, if you're interested. There's also a much-higher quality version of the same event in a different venue here, posted by dreamweaponfilm.

The band, in my opinion, really doesn't sound very good recorded. There's an energy in their live sets that is completely lost on the records. So, here is an older live rendition of “Rain On” posted by S3nzafine: