Woodsist Indierock | Alternative 14 Items

Our House On The Hill Colored Vinyl Edition

Release: 2023 / US – Original

Genre: Rock & Indie

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John Andrews is something of an open secret in a certain corner of the music scene: a versatile musician and animator. A film school drop out whose work hat-tips tradition as much as outsider anti-aesthetics. He’s spent over a decade on the DIY circuit, playing early house shows alongside then up-and-coming peers Weyes Blood and Daniel Bachman. Today he is still out there projecting his sketchy hand-drawn animations during his performances in coffee shops, small galleries and non-traditional venues. Andrews’ painterly approach now introduces the listener to his version of New York City, the place he was bound to end up after years of dwelling in Pennsylvania farm towns and New Hampshire barns. There is handmade vibrancy to the world he’s imagined here: intimate moments seen from the interior, looking outward from hole-in-the-wall restaurants, theaters and the fragments of peace found within the restless and dirty street corners.

Love For The Underdog, his aptly titled fourth release with the Woodsist label, was tracked live to tape in various studios and apartments across the Empire State with help from his bandmates in Cut Worms’ touring outfit, Max Clarke, Keven Lareau and Noah Bond. Buoyant melodies are supported by timeless string arrangements, translated from Andrews’ head to page with the help of friend Simon Hanes. The string quartet follows the tradition of Francoise Hardy, Harry Nilsson, Margo Guryan and Belle and Sebastian, giving the whole thing a cinematic ambience with stark shadows of an Edward Hopper painting. The lyrics tie together narratives of cynical heroes and troubled lovers. Put on the record and sink into well-worn red velvet theater seats, when the lights go down and the flickering of projectors run the title: Love For The Underdog, indeed.

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The Babies

LP | 2012 | US | Reissue (Woodsist)

27,99 €*

LP | 2023 | US | Original (Woodsist)

Release: 2012 / US – Reissue

Genre: Rock & Indie

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Bobbie Lovesong

On The Wind

16,89 €* 25,99 € -35%

Still Life Transparent Green Vinyl Edition

Release: 2023 / US – Original

Genre: Rock & Indie

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Bobbie Lovesong is the alias of American recording artist Madelyn Strutz. “On The Wind” is the debut full length from Bobbie, who produced, performed, recorded, and mixed the album herself in Taos, New Mexico. The album is a collection of psych-pop oddities and fizzy space age interpretations of jazz standards that are informed in equal parts by Larry Heard’s breezy dream sceneries, LSD blotted Americana and kaleidoscopic 60’s pop. Bobbie went to Taos, New Mexico in 2020 to live communally with a small group of musicians as the lockdown stretched on for months. Retreating into an unfinished Earthship, Bobbie passed the days writing and recording music, with nothing more than a laptop microphone and a few instruments. At once surreal, timeless and extraterrestrial, “On The Wind” can be heard as a hallucinatory sonic love letter to Taos.

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Kevin Morby

LP | 2014 | US | Reissue (Woodsist)

26,99 €*

LP | 2021 | US | Original (Woodsist)

Release: 2014 / US – Reissue

Genre: Rock & Indie

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Still Life is the second solo album from Kevin Morby. The namesake of the record is an art piece by Maynard Monrow entitled “Still Life with the Rejects from the Land of Misfit Toys.” The album’s title has several meanings. On the surface, it refers to Morby’s change in lifestyle that came with moving to Los Angeles from New York in August of 2013. But he also admits that the title is ironic. The songs from Still Life were written during yet another period of tour and travel for Morby, as he spent almost all of 2013 on the road with Woods (with whom Morby parted ways amicably last year), The Babies (who are currently on hiatus) and as a solo artist. The album reflects both this time in transit and the quiet confines of his new home in Montecito Heights. Scenes of performers, audience expectations and the paradoxical confines of a roving individual perpetually caught in a crowd percolate the songs, notably in “The Jester, The Tramp & The Acrobat,” and “Parade.” (Morby calls the latter an elegy of sorts for one of his major influences, Lou Reed.) Violent fates, wrestling with destiny and the nature of death creep into songs like “The Ballad of Arlo Jones,” “Bloodsucker” and “Amen.” Even Morby’s more obvious love songs like “All of My Life,” “Drowning” and “Our Moon” are highly bittersweet; the characters seem to never quite find each other, but perhaps they find themselves. As with Harlem River, Still Life is produced by Rob Barbato (Cass McCombs, Darker My Love) who adds his signature guitar and bass playing to the album. The album was engineered and mixed by Drew Fischer, who also worked on Harlem River and The Babies’ second full-length album Our House on the Hill, and recorded between March and June of 2014 at Barbato and Fischer’s new studio, Comp’ny. Morby is also once again joined by Justin Sullivan (The Babies) on drums and percussion. Sullivan is a fixture in Morby’s live band, which completed a full US tour in January of 2014, supporting Cate Le Bon. Solo artist (and Le Bon guitarist) H. Hawkline handled bass duties for Morby on the tour and contributes bass to three songs on the record that were a live staple. Multi-instrumentalist Will Canzoneri (Le Bon, Cass McCombs, Jessica Pratt), who also performed live with Morby on the tour and who was a contributor on Harlem River, performs piano and organ on the album.

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John Andrews & The Yawns

Cookbook

Release: 2021 / US – Original

Genre: Rock & Indie

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“John Andrews is picking flowers from each corner of his life and presenting you with an unusual bouquet. His imaginary band ‘The Yawns’ are back! Third time’s a charm. In hockey terms, they call it a ‘hat trick’ and you know who’s always wearing a ratty old hat? John Andrews. Three years in the making and we have Cookbook, the third, and most colorful record from your favorite New Hampshire based craftsman. “Unknowing folks usually assume he lives in New York City or Los Angeles but confer with John for five minutes and if he’s in the right mood he’ll talk your ear off about the granite state and the old, seedy colonial barn where he’s tracked his records with his weird and wonderful friends. “Take a listen to his previous effort, 2017’s Bad Posture. It was the grassroot slacker’s pie in the sky. His head was stuck in the past. He probably excessively listened to ‘Cripple Creek Ferry’ and he most likely wasn’t keeping up with household chores. Time moves on, but just look at him now! All grown up yet likely still feeling those growing pains. After a few more years of traveling we now have Cookbook, fresh out the oven…phew! About nine or ten new tracks, but who’s really counting? “The lyrics are simple and endearing, inspired by mid-century love songs. His inspirations are all across the board. If his subconscious was a bootleg taper, life would be the show. “At any rate, it doesn’t sound like a record made in New Hampshire, but make no mistake, this is a dyed-in-the-wool Yawns record, refreshingly straightforward yet full of character. It’s less of a crowded honky tonk, and more of an empty, poignant speakeasy. You can finally relax indoors after a weary day out in the cold. Have you ever seen that painting of dogs playing poker? It might as well be what they were listening to as the bulldog pushed his chips forward.” —John’s mom

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Reflections Volume 1 (Bumble Bee Crown King)Black Vinyl Edition

LP | 2021 | US | Original (Woodsist)

Release: 2021 / US – Original

Genre: Rock & Indie

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With no touring in 2020, and possibly this year, Woods decided to take a deep dive into their archives and put together the first volume of their much discussed archival series, Reflections. Featuring rare and unreleased recordings from 2009 - 2013, including a ghost town desert jam off the side of the highway, their first live performance in Big Sur, the first recorded version of “Bend Beyond” and some shelved diamonds in the rough that were finished up during quarantine. Their hope is that it plays like a “lost record” from an extremely strange and fruitful period in Woods history.

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Reflections Volume 1 (Bumble Bee Crown King)Colored Vinyl Edition

LP | 2021 | US | Original (Woodsist)

26,99 €*

Release: 2021 / US – Original

Genre: Rock & Indie

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Strange To Explain Black Vinyl Edition

LP | 2020 | US | Original (Woodsist)

LP | 2019 | US | Original (Woodsist)

Release: 2020 / US – Original

Genre: Rock & Indie

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“Dreaming doesn’t come easy these shadowed days, which is why Strange To Explain by Woods is such a welcome turning of new colors. It presents an extended moment of sweet reflection for the 15-year-old band, bouncing back to earth as something hopeful and weird and resolute. Like everything else they’ve recorded, it sounds exactly like themselves, but with subtly different shades and breaths and rhythmic feels and everything else that changes, the natural march of time and the intentional decisions of the musicians moving in what feels like an uncommonly organic alignment.
“Strange To Explain trades in a different kind of dependability, maintaining a steady connection to the voice on the other side of the record needle. After quickly recording and releasing 2017’s Love Is Love in response to the tumultuous events of their (and our) 2016, Jeremy Earl and company took their time with what came next. Parenthood arrived, as did a short songwriting pause. The band went bicoastal when Jarvis Taveniere headed west. And when they returned to their posts, there on the other side of this particular mirror, they made this, an album that not only catches and holds and shares the light in yet another new way, but recognizes that there’s still light to be caught, which is also no small thing.
“A bend beyond the last bend beyond, Woods keep on changing, thoughtfully and beautifully. The colors were always there, like trees blossoming just slightly differently each season, a synesthetic message coded in slow-motion. Recorded in Stinson Beach, the kind of place that seems like an AI simulation of an idyllic northern California coastal escape, the familiar jangling guitars recede to the background. John Andrews’s warm keyboards and twining Mellotron rise around Earl’s songs and dance across the chord changes like warm sunlight off the Pacific. The music feels a karmic landmass away from the creepiness of the uncanny valley.” —Jesse Jarnow

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Hurt Valley

Glacial Pace

26,99 €*

LP | 2018 | US | Original (Woodsist)

Release: 2019 / US – Original

Genre: Rock & Indie

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During a trip to Death Valley, California in 2010, two friends decided to drive an old Saturn station wagon down a four wheel drive road into the wilderness. After a few hours of driving through the canyons, ever so slowly so not to bottom out the car, they came upon a clearing. It was filled with burned out vehicle carcasses and double wide trailers that had all been shot at, set on fire, vandalized, and finally left to become relics of the desert. It was surreal in the sunset of painted rocks and dead silence.
Upon returning home to an A-frame house in Sugarloaf California, Brian Collins started Hurt Valley as a recording project. Many ideas and songs were fleshed out next to a wood burning stove and firelight. Fast forward a few more years, and with a relocation to Los Angeles in 2014, Hurt Valley became a routinely worked on project. What happened next, along with the comings and goings of many different friends and neighbors, was the recording of a series of songs over the course of a few years. Days, nights and weekends, and anytime in between, songs were crafted and recorded in a living room, in an apartment, in Los Angeles. This is what would become Glacial Pace, an album that is part memoir, part dream, part feeling—good, bad, and in between.

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Bonny Doon

Longwave

LP | 2015 | US | Original (Woodsist)

Release: 2018 / US – Original

Genre: Rock & Indie

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Arriving in the early months of 2017, Bonny Doon’s self-titled debut was a warm introduction to the band for many. Hazy and bright, the album’s woozy melodies and swirling webs of summery guitar textures were easily ingested as low-key slacker pop. But the nonchalant breeziness belied a serious attention to songcraft, and hinted at depths yet unexplored. Lo and behold, before the ink was even dry on the first record, work had already begun on its follow-up Longwave, a conscious about-face from the sonic experimentation of the first album, and a journey inward.

In the spring of 2016 the band decamped to a remote part of Michigan, nesting near the evocatively named Mystic Lake, and spent a week uprooting former approaches and reinventing their sound anew. Moving into more improvisational territory, they wrote quickly and from the hip, using repetitive chord structures to aid in spontaneous generation. Attracted to the session’s spacious arrangements and unaffected sounds, they immediately went into the studio to capture the material. Working for the first time outside of home recording settings with engineer Bill Skibbe and longtime friend and collaborator Shelley Salant, the experience allowed for a focused concentration on bringing the intrinsic spirit of the group to the surface.

Opting for spontaneity and simplicity over the exploration of layers and textures that defined the first record, the band architected an incredibly intimate sound for these new songs. The album was tracked with minimal overdubs or production flourishes, constructing a frame that is spare and understated in the same way as the twilight-tinted third Velvet Underground album or the rusty glow of Bill Fay’s Time Of Last Persecution. These sessions aimed to capture the band at their essence. With the superfluous stripped away, a gentle but steadfast spiritual core is revealed as the backbone of Bonny Doon’s cosmic American music.

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Herbcraft

Wot Oz

18,99 €*

LP | 2015 | US | Original (Woodsist)

Release: 2015 / US – Original

Genre: Rock & Indie

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Across four LPs, Herbcraft’s trajectory has taken the form of an open-ended and perpetual trip, covering ground from the pining bedroom odes of Agartha to the psychedelic living room services of Ashram, to the full-band barn hoots of 2013’s The Astral Body Electric. On its fourth album, Wot Oz, the band undergoes another bold reinvention, shifting its locale to the Traummaschine A/B warehouse, where Matt Lajoie met with drummer Aaron Neveu and bassist / organist Joe Lindsey for the trio’s first-ever rehearsal in July 2013. The practice was intended simply as a warm-up for a live gig, but surveillance tape began rolling almost immediately, as the group’s chemistry imbued both abstract sound experiments and primitive rock- and blues-based numbers with the same heady waft of freewheeling possibility. The needle touches down on a slice of this initial meeting: “Fit Ür-Head” lands at the feral, pummeling nexus of proto- and post-punk; a live-to-tape two-chord gob of lung-tar spat inches from a flea market snakeskin, while voices howl and wah guitar razes every inch of green. From this auspicious birth the album moves through the afterhours narco-haze of “Au’s Nation” to the Zamrock-inspired groove of “Push Thru the Veil,” with Neveu rolling off an endless stream of future-classic break-beats throughout. On the flip, “No More Doors” finds a sunbaked cassette of tabla-and-bass loops melting as the band abandons Earth for hallucinogenic oblivion, and the album’s closing 12-bar blues deconsecration “Bread Don’t Rise” spins a circular framework into a sweaty Fillmore dancefloor-filler strictly for the heads. Fittingly, this trip ends only when the tape falls off the reel. Wot Oz was recorded and mixed on 1/4-inch tape and four-track cassette, mastered by Timothy Stollenwerk, and is presented in mono for optimal blare. Turn it up.

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Little Wings

Explains

19,99 €*

Release: 2015 / US – Original

Genre: Rock & Indie

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LP | 2009 | US | Original (Woodsist)

Songs Of Shame

18,99 €*

In The Air Black Vinyl Edition

Release: 2009 / US – Original

Genre: Rock & Indie

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Anna St. Louis

LP | 2023 | US | Original (Woodsist)

25,99 €*