Rare Forms

There are times when Woodsman’s new record, Rare Forms, falls a little flat and feels a bit lukewarm. Guitar arpeggios can become a hindrance, especially when they’re stretched out on a rack for almost six minutes and beaten to death (“Inside/Outside”). It wouldn’t have hurt the foursome to trim that thicket—that bushy sprawl of random cymbal rolls and neon-green echo-plasm that recall Animal Collective at its worst, either (“Unnamed,” others). 

Still, Rare Forms is a multi-faceted effort that, at the very least, serves as a first step toward curating a fresh, original audio persona all Woodsman’s own. Sometimes it sounds like a Satriani riff got lost in a big pile of echo and decided to eat its way out from the inside; at others it’s as if an alien learned how to simultaneously future-fit the harmonica and take tom-tom stomps back a decade or two, with all sorts of buzzing, humming distractions carefully wading (and waddling) in and out of the mix. It’s almost beyond psychedelia—so carefully created to stimulate, one almost forgets about Rare Forms’ muscular, snare-pounding side.

Rarely, save the exceptions already noted, is the fray uninteresting. Unoriginal? Often! But never uninteresting; the Denver quartet creates a curious world with its many futuristic weapons. Most impressive is its flexibility: The band forges further into the rock side of the void than most of today’s eternally looped bedroom solo projects and generates a great deal of electricity. This music is almost certainly ferocious in concert, but good on wax as well, offering listeners another reason to keep track of Woodman’s firm, ready-to-explode oeuvre.