Untitled - ArKtype

The visuals in their set were far more engaging than the music, which suffered from basic
deficiencies of competence. Ms. Elder sang in a flat-featured moan, and Mr. Valentine in a
tuneless mumble; when they vocalized together, the effect was slovenly. Their cover of Bob
Dylan’s “Positively 4th Street” collapsed in the middle, a transparent failure. The only satisfying
moments came on “Easy Livin’,” a ballad indebted to Neil Young’s Laurel Canyon period, and
“Get Right Church,” a shambling faux-soul tune.
Woods fared infinitely better, alternating between concise songs and formless but purposeful
bouts of noise. The band has an intense but unostentatious singer and guitarist in Jeremy Earl, and
an inscrutable linchpin in G. Lucas Crane,
who spent the entire show on the floor,
kneeling over a mess of equipment,
engaged in his usual practice of analog
tape manipulation and effects-treated
background vocals. Filling out the group
were Kevin Morby on bass and guitar and
Jarvis Taveniere on drums, both working
with rugged precision.
Much of the pleasure in Woods’s set
involved tunes from a likable new album,
“At Echo Lake” (Woodsist). “Blood Dries
Darker,” a peppy folk-rock number,
arrived early; “Suffering Season,” blithely
redolent of sunshine pop, turned up in the
middle. But even some of the looser
gestures were arresting, as in a final
stretch, which had Mr. Crane blaring on a
trumpet while everyone else bashed at a
steady crescendo. Trancelike but full of abstract incident, it suited what was unfolding on screen.