If you’re a fan of the New York trio The Wood Brothers, you’ll know the band’s sound has long been a rustic mix of acoustic folk, country twang and bluesy roots rock.
Its Aug. 15 show at The Refinery will certainly feature plenty of old-school tunes in that vein, songs like “Luckiest Man,” “Postcards From Hell,” and “The Muse,” which have been streamed around 150 million times, combined.
But the crowd should expect some curveballs as well. And that’s because on its just-released new album, Puff of Smoke, The Wood Brothers gets as experimental as the band has ever been.
The opening track, “Witness,” kicks off with the basic elements of the band’s sound: Wiry, sparse acoustic guitar-upright bass interplay between singer/guitarist Oliver Wood and his bass-playing brother Chris, with slippery percussion from multi-instrumentalist Jano Rix.
But about halfway through the tune, a jarring chorus of slightly out-of-sync saxophones joins the mix, throwing things off kilter before a soulful, soothing chorus rights the ship.
“Pray God Listens” works Afro-Cuban polyrhythms into the band’s musical mix, and then there’s the merry-go-round opening to “Above All Others” that dissolves into a crunchy guitar meltdown. And “The Trick” takes The Wood Brothers about as far afield as it has ever gone, with funky beats and jagged shards of dissonant guitar.
“The word ‘experimental’ is relative, right?” asked Chris Wood in a recent interview with the Charleston City Paper. “There’s definitely a lot weirder music out there in the world, and I’ve been a part of it in my past. But for The Wood Brothers, there are so many influences we have that we’ve added slowly over the years.”
In fact, he argued the different sounds on Puff of Smoke are about The Wood Brothers being more self-assured, not more experimental.
“Over time, a band finds its voice,” he said. “And then when it finds its voice, it feels confident enough about that voice that it can add genres and sounds that are new to the band without losing its voice.”
A trick in the trade
Or, to quote the refrain of “The Trick” from Puff of Smoke, maybe for The Wood Brothers, “the trick is not to give a damn” when it comes to genres or expectations.
“The trick is, how do you not give a damn on purpose?” Wood asked. “That’s a skill that you have to learn. Sometimes you get up in front of a packed, sold-out show and you feel self-conscious and you feel like it wasn’t your best show. Then you play a show in a shitty bar, where there’s barely anybody there. And you have the best show of the tour because you’re free, you don’t give a damn.
“After that happens enough in your life,” he continued, “you start recognizing a pattern that when you don’t give a damn, it makes the music better. In that moment, how can you not give a damn? That’s the trick. And that’s a theme that runs through a lot of our music.”
It also helps that The Wood Brothers has Rix on hand to cover just about any instrumental tangent it goes on.
“Jano Rix can play drums and play keyboards at the same time,” Wood said. “He also sings and plays the sitar, and he can do all that stuff simultaneously. It just takes time to organically integrate the sounds into the arrangements and then to the performances onstage.”
With Puff of Smoke out and the band’s supporting tour just getting started, Wood said he’s looking forward to seeing how fans like the ones at The Refinery react to the new album.
“We’re excited for everybody to hear the new music,” he said. “All I know is that we love it and we’re having a blast playing this new music, and I think that’s going to translate when people hear it live.”
IF YOU WANT TO GO: Doors open at 6 p.m., Aug. 15, The Refinery, 164 Meeting Street Road, Charleston. Tickets are $41.50: therefinerychs.com
Related
Help keep the City Paper free.
No paywalls.
No subscription cost.
Free delivery at 800 locations.
Help support independent journalism by donating today.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
