2009 release, the fourth full-length by Woods, Songs of Shame, veers away from the lo-fi guerillas-in-the-mist sound of their previous Shrimper long-player, At Rear House, and presents both 90-second and ten-minute forays into skeletal psychedelia. The idiosyncratic songwriting style and vocalizing of Jeremy Earl is still present in spades on the album. Woods have toured incessantly as a trio over the last 12 months, and the songs on Shame have had their mettle tested. Read more on Last.fm.
A ramshackle and entertaining lo-fi pop record, “Songs of Shame” was the album where Woods started to pull it together and gain notice from more than their small following of psych-heads. Filled with more hooks than anything they’d down previously, “Songs of Shame” features a fun single in “To Clean,” a brilliant cover of Graham Nash’s “Military Madness,” and the possible career highlight “Rain On” (among others). The only thing that mars this album is the 10 minute, meandering “September With Pete” – more like their experimental live shows than anything else here, but also draining the album’s front end of any momentum it built up – and the fact that it sort of goes out with a whimper, the last two tracks seeming like something of an afterthought following the brilliance that preceded them.