A lot happened in the three years between
Woods' 2017 album
Love Is Love and their 2020 follow-up
Strange to Explain. Core members
Jeremy Earl and
Jarvis Taveniere worked closely with David Berman on his
Purple Mountains album, the last music Berman would make before his death just weeks after the album's release. In addition,
Earl became a father and
Taveniere left the East Coast for the West, putting substantial distance between himself and his bandmates. Their 11th proper studio album,
Strange to Explain, reflects all of this life in progress, standing as the most restrained, thoughtful, and varied record in a massive discography already well-stocked with thoughtful songwriting and wildly varied arrangement choices. Somewhere around 2016's
City Sun Eater in the River of Light, the band shook up their long-running psychedelic indie folk approach by flirting with touches of Ethiopian jazz and expanding their instrumentation to include horns. These expansions of the band's sound come into their own on
Strange to Explain, fitting the songwriting more naturally than ever before. The slightly Ethiopian-flavored groove that album-opener "Next to You and the Sea" coasts along on feels less heavy-handed than some of
Woods' earlier genre experiments. The song is pushed more by
Earl's distinctive falsetto vocals and the eerie, floating songwriting he's always delivered than by any stylistic choices. This is also true of the brief instrumental "The Void," a dreamy but somewhat creepy wash of vibraphone, blurry guitar leads, and keys. By the time the horns arrive on the seven-minute "Weekend Wind," the band is already entrenched in the kind of
Crazy Horse-modeled groove they perfected on 2012's
Bend Beyond. Much of
Strange to Explain isn't about
Woods breaking new ground, but perfecting the strengths they've spent years developing. Driven by warbly synth melodies and clean rhythms, "Where Do You Go When You Dream?" is one of their strongest songs to date. It patiently moves from slinky verses into a chorus built on wistful acoustic guitar chords and the kind of dreamy melodies
Earl excels at. "Before They Pass By" expands on familiar pastoral indie folk foundations, adding subtle Mellotron lines and layered percussion overdubs. It's not just a matter of amped-up production taking the album to a new level, especially considering
Woods have long graduated from their crusty lo-fi beginnings by this point. Instead,
Strange to Explain sounds like the result of carefully considered choices in songwriting and production. Without losing the unfiltered emotion that makes them so compelling,
Woods reach a new maturity with these songs. Fifteen years into a tirelessly curious evolution, the band sound more comfortable and surefooted here than ever before. ~ Fred Thomas