meet me in the woods

The first song on At Rear House, the second album from the New York group the Woods, is full of protests. At first, they’re pleas — “Don’t pass on me, and I won’t pass on you” — but as the song progresses they get darker and more depressed, ending finally at “Don’t count on me” and “Don’t wait on me.” The record is full of these kinds of strange twists; small ballads blossom into oversized choruses and the lyrics instill ominousness into the everyday (one of them consists of the line “Who’s gonna walk the dog?” repeated over and over).

There’s a lot working against them — the fact that they’re from Brooklyn and sing in high voices and play acoustic guitars makes it tempting to brand them another in the long, terrible line of freak-folkies. But there’s an earthiness and a vulnerability to The Woods’ music that overcomes that pigeonholing. The album was apparently recorded on a 4-track, and its fuzzed-out, half-assed execution hearkens back to the days of Sentridoh cassettes and photocopied fanzines. It’s rickety and wobbly, but that’s precisely what makes it work. Start with “Hunover,” and move straight to “Ring Me to Sleep,” a strange, image-loaded folk song that manages to be both vague and touching all at once.