The Woods were a lonely band during the mid-'80s, feeling out of place in the N.Y.C. music scene they yearned to be a part of but could never fully join. The reason why was that they were making music unlike anyone else at the time, as the 2023 collection of their work titled
So Long Before Now thrillingly reveals. With a lineup that included amateur musicians with retiring natures and an avant-garde cello player, they crafted fragile mini-epics that took elements of
Velvet Underground-style art rock, murky British folk a la
Fairport Convention, and angular melodies inspired by post-punk groups like
the Raincoats, and combined them with a diffident, almost shy way of writing songs that was magically different. Maybe
R.E.M. was cooking up something vaguely similar in Georgia, but this is resolutely inspired by life in the big city. One can feel the isolation and bustle of the city bleeding into the songs, which are the work of four people warily trying to break free of the masses and create something real and true. Most of the songs were written by
Linda Smith, who lo-fi enthusiasts will know for the raft of brilliant home-recorded albums she began releasing after the band's demise in the late '80s. She came up with super-catchy melodies without obvious hooks and the band worked together to come up with arrangements that beckon the listener to crawl inside and explore their intricacies. The A-side of the band's lone released single from 1985, "Miracles Tonight," is a prime example of what makes them so special. It begins with a vocal harmony right off a
Fairport album and shifts into a jangling psychedelic rocker with spiraling vocal lines, thundering bass, and
Smith's appealingly human vocals at the center. It's truly one of the lost classics of the era and the band might have topped it if they had been able to finish their debut album before packing it in. The collection gathers all the tracks they were close to finishing, and they're great. A mix of politically charged post-punk songs, dream-like ballads that feel like they were taped under the covers during a seance (especially "The Real Miss Charlotte"), and jangling, insistent
VU-inspired songs -- the band's constant desire to explore sound and form is exciting. Their vocal arrangements are particularly interesting as no other bands were trying to pull off anything quite so Baroque at the time. It's possible they would have fared better as part of the Paisley Underground in L.A. or in the C-86 crowd in the U.K., but one thing for sure is that the N.Y.C. scene had no place for them. Listening to their music in the 2020s, it's clear that they were doing something too advanced, too intimate, maybe even too good for anyone to truly appreciate at the time. Thanks to
Sundazed and their
Dot Matrix off-shoot, everyone can finally hear them and recognize them as more than just a footnote in the
Linda Smith story: they were one of the most creative, inspired, and interesting bands of the '80s. ~ Tim Sendra
![Dead Center [Bonus Tracks]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0816651016549_p0_v2_s90x140.jpg "Dead Center [Bonus Tracks]")
