City Sun Eater in the River of Light

Nine albums in, Woods are comfortable in their identity as perennial Brooklynite psych-folkers. *City Sun Eater In the River of Light* doesn’t drift far from the laconic path they’ve tread, but add delightful, surprising side-trips. You can hear their aspirations on songs like “Can’t See It All,” fragrant with ‘70s deep-crate touches, and “Hollow Home,” with its deep Beach Boys vibes. “Sun City Creeps” has subtle *Graceland* touches while “The Take” shifts into psych-freakout overdrive around the 3:12 mark. Jeremy Earl’s thin falsetto drapes over the songs like an elegant veil, providing a steadying warmth that carries the album.

"Woods have always been experts at distilling life epiphanies into compact chunks of psychedelic folk that exists just outside of any sort of tangible time or place. Maybe those epiphanies were buried under cassette manipulation or drum-and-drone freakouts, or maybe they were cloaked in Jeremy Earl’s lilting falsetto, but over the course of an impressive eight albums, Woods refined and drilled down their sound into City Sun Eater in the River of Light, their ninth LP and second recorded in a proper studio. It’s a dense record of rippling guitar, lush horns, and seductive, bustling anxiety about the state of the world. It’s still the Woods you recognize, only now they’re dabbling in zonked out Ethiopian jazz, pulling influence from the low key simmer of Brown Rice, and tapping into the weird dichotomy of making a home in a claustrophobic city that feels full of possibility even as it closes in on you. City Sun Eater in the River of Light is concise, powerful, anxious—barreling headlong into an uncertain, constantly shifting new world." -Sam Hockley-Smith

After eight albums of solid if predictable psych-folk, Woods shake up their pastoral sound a bit, introducing notes of reggae and African jazz.

Prolific Brooklyn band with lo-fi roots continue to expand their sound on ninth LP that brims with blissful guitars and influences ranging from latin jazz to acid rock.

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Humble consistency and commitment to craft have long been Woods' defining virtues, so the boldness of the band's ninth full-length, City Sun Eater in the River of Light, is an invigorating rush.

The Brooklyn psychedelic folk outfit throw a brass section and other surprises into their impressive ninth album

Of course, evoking those big-tent acts when discussing Woods is a bait-and-switch.

Woods - City Sun Eater In The River Of Light review: There will always be a place for you, meet me on the other side