[photos by Sachyn Mital]
The conventional and somewhat lazy take on the new Woods album With Light and with Love is that its a radical departure for the band — a more refined and pop-oriented record. The reality is that With Light is the natural progression of a band that’s been growing and evolving since we first saw them back in 2008. With the exit of excellent bassist (and all around good guy) Kevin Morby to pursue his solo career, Woods is now down to two original members. Original drummer Jarvis Taveniere moved to guitar several years ago and his signature is all over the new album with universally positive results. The lead guitar work on With Light has both melodic structure and experimental elements when appropriate. “Moving to the Left” begins with a wah-wah lead line that propels the song until the band opens up the song for an extended instrumental passage. Its perhaps the signature Woods song on the album, and the live version (streaming below) was equally strong. At the center of the band remains Jeremy Earl whose songwriting chops continue to grow. The album contains some truly beautiful songs and the lyrical content shows great maturity. Jeremy lives upstate, owns his own record label and runs his own festival every year — he has adult responsibilities and the music reflects that kind of wisdom. At Bowery Ballroom on Friday night, Woods returned to Manhattan for the first time since last summer and the new album clearly dominated the setlist. In fact, the band played 8 of the album’s ten tracks, three songs from the previous album (2012’s Bend Beyond), one song from 2011’s Sun and Shade and one phenomenal Pink Floyd cover (streaming below). As this show comes a few weeks into the tour, the band’s new additions (organ and bass) have become truly integrated and as a result the set was tight and well structured but left plenty of room to jam — much like all of the excellent Woods shows we’ve recorded over the years.
I recorded this set from our usual balcony spot at this venue and mixed with an excellent feed from Bowery legend Kenny. The sound quality is superb. Enjoy!
Stream “Moving to the Left”:
Stream “Green Is The Colour” (Pink Floyd cover):
Download the Complete Show [MP3] / [FLAC]
Note: All of the material on this site is offered with artist permission, free to fans, at our expense. The only thing we ask is that you download the material directly from this site, rather than re-posting the direct download links or the files on other sites without our permission. Feel free to re-post the Soundcloud link. Please respect our request.
Woods
2014-05-16
Bowery Ballroom
New York, NY
Digital Master Recording
Soundboard + Audience Matrix
Soundboard [engineer Kenny] + Sennheiser MKH-8040s > Edirol R-44 (Oade Mod) > 2 x 24bit 48kHz wav files > Soundforge (level adjustments, mixdown, set fades) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and tagging via Foobar)
Recorded and Produced
by nyctaper
Setlist:
[Total Time 1:06:02]
01 [intro]
02 Leaves Like Glass
03 Full Moon
04 Cali In A Cup
05 Shining
06 Bend Beyond
07 Size Meets The Sound
08 Shepherd
09 [banter – Chuck]
10 Only the Lonely
11 Moving to the Left
12 Twin Steps
13 With Light and With Love
14 [encore break]
15 Green Is The Colour [Pink Floyd]
16 Be All Be Easy
If you download this recording from NYCTaper PLEASE SUPPORT Woods, visit their website, and purchase With Light and with Love from the Woodsist Records website [HERE].
Easily your finest Woods capture yet. I thought the sound on this tour was remarkably clean and matched the clarity found on the last two albums.
Did you also record Quilt?
Sound quality-wise, I’m still partial to our 2011 6-channel capture:
https://www.nyctaper.com/2011/08/woods-august-13-2011-bowery-ballroom-flac-and-mp3-downloads-streaming-songs/
And yes, I did record Quilt and it sounds equally amazing but I will need to get approval before posting it. I’m working on the recording now and will likely reach out in the next day or two.
Thanks again!
Great work as usual