Woodsist

On its fifth album, At Echo Lake, the ragtag Brooklyn psychniks Woods has finally discovered folk-pop hooks, as if they were baubles dug up at a thrift store amid old television remotes and bedazzled jeans. But they scored big. The music is still slathered in brilliantly warbling cassettes ( G. Lucas Crane on “Suffering Season” ), lo-fi vibe enhancers ( Matt Valentine’s banjo-sitar on “Time Fading Lines,” fuzzy bells on “I Was Gone” ) and, everywhere, leader Jeremy Earl’s helium-sucked sincerity. Here, though, Earl couples memorable turns with assertive wisdom and a brave concision. The 11 songs don’t break half-an-hour – “From the Horn” is the album’s requisite sweet guitar jam, but it’s barely two minutes long. All killer, no filler – just miniature vessels to elsewhere.