Progressive americana trio brings inventive songwriting and lyrical wit on ninth album.
Across a 20-year shared history, The Wood Brothers have mixed masterful songcraft with a blend of music that is impractical to genre-tag. You’ll find roots rock, funk, folk, jazz, country and rockabilly mixed with New Orleans brass and unidentifiable elements that are the product of the band’s hive mind. With songs like ‘Sing About It,’ ‘Happiness Jones,’ ‘Tried and Tempted,’ ‘Luckiest Man’ and the gooey delicacy of ‘Chocolate on My Tongue,’ the band has established a musical beachhead that is entirely their own.
The genius of this trio is that they can address new themes, tinker with the instrumentation, embrace unpredictability, and they still come across as The Wood Brothers, and enjoying their music is like having a mouthful of rib-eye perfectly seared with the tiniest of pink centre. Their strength lies in the juicy flow of talents that meld together to produce little droplets of truth, justice and the Woodsian way. That is, their albums work as a whole, not a concept, but like a chain-link fence where if you remove one link, it won’t keep the dogs in the yard.
Their ninth album was largely recorded at The Studio Nashville, a creative space in the Sylvan Heights neighbourhood that has become an essential companion to the band’s evolution. “Puff of Smoke” distils the trio’s curious musical minds, voracious appetite for the creative process, and love of spontaneity. “This album is a little bit schizophrenic and eclectic, and it goes in a few different directions,” says Oliver Wood.
Speculations such as that are hardly surprising. The album’s opening track, ‘Witness’, interjects a funky groove teeming with back-alley New Orleans brass. The title track brings Oliver’s twinkle, his halting eloquence, his robust assertiveness in lyrics such as “Every day is a puff of smoke. Or maybe it’s a river flowin’, Takin’ you where you’re goin’, No matter how you fuss and fight, You’re gonna ride”. He provides all aspiring seekers an image to shoot for, but his private dimensions are left draped in opaque silks.
The loose, conversational, front-stoop feel of ‘Slow Rise (To the Middle)’ and ‘You Choose Me’ are less mystical perhaps than others in the exuberant, 11-song album, but a subtly crisp dynamic does emerge. “I know I’m not pretty and young, Got dirt under my nails and burns on my tongue.” Elsewhere, the trio’s enormous enthusiasm for the rapture of life flares like a bonfire in a Druid glade.
“Even a song like ‘Pray God Listens,’ which is a little bit humorous and cynical, ultimately it’s a song of compassion and humility,” Oliver Wood, guitarist, vocalist and songwriter said. “It’s meant to be light, but it’s ambiguous enough that you can draw your own conclusion. You can take the cynicism part and the humour, or you can go a little deeper and find the compassion.” The song awakens the potential for wonders in everyone. He has unbuttoned the secrets of living for us and let the inexhaustible inspiration of being stream through. “I pray God listens, And it’s his favourite song, And he sings along, And he takes the call.”
The group also finds inspiration in a shared focus on meditation and mindfulness. “Ways not to go crazy, basically,” Oliver admits. “Songs like ‘The Trick’ and ‘Witness’ are very much about mindfulness. The trick is not to give a damn — so, that’s detachment — or, I’m just a witness — I’m just watching things happen. I’m not gonna be my feelings. I’m gonna watch ’em float by.”
The third member of the band, multi-instrumentalist Jano Rix, contributes much more with each passing album. On ‘The Trick,’ he found the song’s signature sound, an overdriven synth that sounds like it could be a clavinet, but is actually a Fender Rhodes pushed through distortion and octave pedals. He also manipulated an analogue synth to conjure the underwater calliope sounds on ‘Above All Others.’ To perform the piano’s centrepiece melody on ‘Pray God Listens,’ he played keys with one hand while reaching inside the piano with his other hand to mute the strings.
When there are dreams to be chased, greener pastures to be grazed, it’s not so much about a hit song, but the experience of a band at the height of its powers, summoning listeners to experience music that feels lived-in with all its array of facets and phases. Less a literal soundtrack to uncertain times or a roadmap showing how to live through them, “Puff of Smoke” posits a happily contrarian outlook: Life can turn on a dime, and all we truly have is the moment at hand. And that’s perfectly fine. “We’re not in control,” says Oliver Wood, “and that can be good news.”
“There’s a lot to unpack musically in this band, and it’s been this evolutionary process over the years and on each record,” bass player Chris Wood said. “Over time, the diversity of things we can do has all become part of our language.” And it’s a reminder of how much more this band still has to offer and how little they have lost along the way.
