Dungen & Woods: Myths 003

Mike Ayers on May 17, 2018

 
Since 2014, the Southwest Texas town of Marfa has been host to Marfa Myths, an annual music and arts festival held each spring. And since its inception, they’ve been doing a cool thing, where they’ll get two of the scheduled acts to hole up in a studio and write original music, with the idea that it will be released. For their latest installment, they wrangled Swedish psych-rock band Dungen and New York indie-folk mainstays Woods for Myths 003 , a dazzling seven-song album. This isn’t the first time the two bands have met—they toured together back in 2009. So it stood with good reason that the chemistry would be there. And over the course of 31 minutes, they explore an array of moods, mostly instrumentals, that would fit right at home in Echoes -era Pink Floyd. The album’s opener, “Loop,” is a driving number wrapped around an array of guitar textures, while “Marfa Sunset” is a rhythmic western number that feels like a reprieve from the scorching sun, as dusk settles in. But the two album highlights are the lone songs with vocals. “Turn Around” is a fantastic psychedelic-pop number and “Jag Ville Va Kvar” is sung in Dungen frontman’s Gustav Ejstes’s native Swedish—it’s a warped, funky number that features a mesmerizing piano hook running throughout. Collaborative albums aren’t supposed to be this good; Myths 003 is genuinely one of the year’s best surprises so far, and it does what any good album does: leaves you wanting much, much more.

Artist: Dungen & Woods
Album: Myths 003
Label: MEXICAN SUMMER