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WOODS, Anastasia Coope **Woods** are in bloom again, inviting you to disappear into a new spectrum of colors and sounds and dreams on Perennial. Formed in Brooklyn 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. Perennial grew from a bed of guitar/keyboard/drum loops by Woods head-in-chief Jeremy Earl, a form of winter night meditation that evolved into an unexplored mode of collaborative songwriting. With Earl’s starting points, he and bandmates Jarvis Taveniere and John Andrews convened, first at Earl’s house in New York, then at Panoramic House studio in Stinson Beach, California, site of sessions for 2020’s Strange To Explain. With a view of the sparkling Pacific and tape rolling, they began to build, jamming over the loops, switching instruments, and developing a few dozen building blocks. **Anastasia Coope**’s forthcoming debut, Darning Woman, is a rich tapestry of surrealist psychedelia that evokes a precipice beyond the material world. Like a dispatch from another past or a memory pressing up against the veil, it’s unmoored in space and time: ghostly, spectral, far-out folk. Through whirling layers of expressive, stratified vocals, her music suggests lost lullabies contorted into alluringly strange, staccato shapes. Numerous cultural touchstones inform Coope’s approach to music-making: the avant-garde art-rock of the ‘80s; Trish Keenan or Su Tissue or Brigitte Fontaine; medieval choruses and church choirs; contemporary folk; the romantic close-harmonies groups of the ‘50s; Meara O'Reilly’s Hockets for Two Voices. Like her paintings, drawings, and mixed media artworks, Coope’s songwriting yields an esoteric distance. It’s the feeling of the work pushing back on you, inviting you to see and feel, rather than know. Yet, for all that’s arcane, it's rooted deeply in the things we can touch. Darning Woman is out May 31 on Jagjaguwar.
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