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“What I Miss Most of All,” opens the album in slow motion with languid reverse reverb and a creaking chair. Kuross’ deliberate playing conveys the listener to his vocals, which emerge with a croak and an echo. The tone of the song is low, the music is watery, wavering and round. There’s a slight clank when the keys are pressed, like the instrument is stretching, getting warmed up. You might perceive music being brought to life, note by note. The apex of animation is in the last couplet, “all my reckless ways, I’m leaving/all those jealous days behind,” when Kuross’ voice swells then pulls up just before it seems ready to crack, holding the back half of “behind” in a high rasp. There’s a sense of satisfaction and arrival in the near silence when his fingers leave the keys. You get the sense he’s been here before.

Kuross arrives at a noisier moment towards the end of “Beggar’s Nation.” Each time the song comes to “what goes around it comes around” an atmospheric tension pressures the tender, chiming chords. As Kuross repeats the line, he plays those chords harder and faster, stirring the music. His delivery, almost chanted, is reminiscent of Thom Yorke on “Everything in Its Right Place.” It sounds like a mantra, or a prayer to escape. Even when Kuross returns to softer and slower playing and the pressure subsides there’s a sense of foreboding. Out of a final instrumental bridge, a crunch of feedback courses through Kuross and his piano, distorting his vocals. A great upheaval seems to have come. But rather than break big, the feedback abruptly slides away, leaving Kuross, his chords, and “what goes around it comes around” as quickly as it struck them. Was it a tremor or the actual earthquake? This ambiguity between beginning and end matches the lyric and continues in the playful way Kuross closes the song, aping an ascending xylophone, like a lead-in to morning announcements.

Kuross carries a piece of that melody briefly into the next song, “Hymn of Defeat.” It’s a hymn of, but also a hymn to. From the first lines “there is a kindness in the loss/of who I thought I’d be,” to the last stanza, “If this heart must fail, then let it fail…Cause I know that what's defeating me/Will one day be defeated” we hear Kuross find, if not a way out of the cycle, at least enough silver lining to bear it. “Inside Joke” stays with the concept but looks closer and here Kuross thrives. “This is a one trick pony/it doesn’t matter how you ride…Are you the last man standing/Or just the one that’s left behind?” goes the chorus, again finding the silver lining but turning it, seeing the dark cloud reflected, picking at ironies. Kuross’ vocals are defiant but delicate, rising and falling in register and the mix. He seems to sway over the keys, building up crescendos that never quite climax. But rather than deflate when a particular probe peters out, the song grooves along towards the next attempt. Kuross sounds in command, flowing and curious; a musical poking around. You’re almost surprised when he stops.

Two songs later, when Crooked Songs really ends, it’s with another creak of the chair and Kuross audibly sighing and walking away. But not before asking a question that haunts the record: “who believes a song can change you?/Or that singing sets you free?” The short answer: “today I feel like singing/to stop the world from changing me.” Worth a try.

Perennial opens with the airy, surfy “The Seed,” an instrumental overture featuring lovely horn textures and some juicy filtered guitar lines. “Between the Past,” the first song proper, is as close as Woods get to being anthemic, pairing a winning psych-folk swing with Earl’s sticky refrain of “Can you see?” Things take a turn for the darker on “Another Side,” which initially feels it might be another weaving instrumental until Earl’s vocals enter the fray. From there, lyrics are soon cast aside to make way for droning organ and fuzzy guitar leads. The sun breaks through the murk on “White Winter Melody,” a mellow instrumental with some jazzy guitar runs and aching pedal steel from Connor Gallaher. It proves a welcome shot of sunshine before the rather bleak, piano-led “Sip of Happiness,” on which Earl confesses, “I’ve been let down, I’ve been depressed.” 

At the album’s mid-point, “Little Black Flowers” is a decent-enough tune with a slinky shimmy, but the central lyric, “Wrap your lips around the sun,” feels incongruous. “Day Moving On” combines shuffling, brushed drums and thick beds of vintage organ tones with plaintive bass notes resonating high up the neck. “The Wind Again” is a jazz/lounge instrumental featuring vibraphone and an eerie, whistled melody, which leads into album standout “Weep,” where the rhythm section locks into a satisfying groove full of pulse and shuffle, set against insistent guitar arpeggios. Fading in and then out again, the warbling tones of the instrumental title track bring the album to an unsettling close, suggesting the loops on which the album was built are running on and on.

"Woods announce their new album, Perennial, out September 15th on Woodsist, and share the double lead single, “Between The Past” b/w “White Winter Melody.” Formed in 2004, Woods have matured into a true independent institution, above and below the root, reliably emerging every few years with new music that grows towards the latest sky. Operating the Woodsist label since 2006 and curating the beloved homespun Woodsist Festival for the musical universe they’ve built, Perennial is the sound of a band on the edge of their 20th anniversary and still finding bold new ways to sound like (and challenge) themselves."