WOODS w/ Edsel Axle

Name: WOODS w/ Edsel Axle
Start: 2026-05-19T19:30:00-04:00
Location: The Press Room

Schedule

Tue, 19 May, 2026 at 07:30 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

The Press Room | Portsmouth, NH

Absolute legends WOODS bring their irresistible, sun-dazed indie psych folk to the Press Room.
WOODS w/ Edsel Axle
Tues 5/19
6:30pm doors/7:30pm show
All Ages | $20 adv./$25 day of
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.
The album’s resulting 11 songs, 4 of them instrumental, are in the classic Woods mode--shimmering, familiar, fractionally unsettling--but with the half-invisible infinity boxes of Earl’s loops burbling beneath each like a mysterious underground source. From source to seed to bloom, each loop unfolds into something unpredictable, from the jeweled pop of the aching “Little Black Flowers” to the ecstatic starlit freak-beat of “Another Side.” They are blossomings both far-out and comforting, like the Mellotronic cloud-hopping of “Between the Past,” or sometimes just plain comforting, like the widescreen snowglobe fantasia of the instrumental “White Winter Melody,” touched by Connor Gallaher’s pedal steel.
Woods have long used the studio as a place of songwriting, naming 2007’s At Rear House after their shared dwelling and recording space. But Perennial also carries with it an even longer view of Woods. Emerging from the process alongside the music was Earl’s reflection that “perennial plants and flowers are nature’s loops,” an idea rolling under the album’s lyrics like the loops themselves. It certainly applies to the band, too, who have quietly tended to a long, committed project of being a band in the weird-ass 21st century, both individually and communally. Though separated by coasts, the communal sprit carries through Earl, Taveniere, and Andrews’ collaboration, a living embodiment of the freedoms rediscovered every time a new collectively created piece of music emerges.
For nearly two decades, Woods have survived subgenres, anchored in the fertile soil below hashtags like lo-fi and freak-folk and psychedelic and indie, and built a shared history that’s something to marvel at. As the flagship band for Woodsist, they’ve accumulated a striking extended family of collaborators (and Woods alum) that have made the label one of the most dependable imprints in the kaleidoscopic low-key underground. It’s a glow that’s transferred whole to the blissed-out Woodsist Fests held in Accord, New York in recent years, which have folded in a wide range of diverse sounds, from the the jazz cosmoverse of the Sun Ra Arkestra and adventurous legends Yo La Tengo, to a hard-to-even-count family tree of contemporaries, like Kevin Morby (who served a few tours of duty as Woods bassist) and Kurt Vile (who released his 2009 debut on Woodsist), a living community in sound.
Perennial carries all of this, shaped by decades, but made in the moment, and here right now. The smell of the flowers doesn’t remain, but sometimes the flowers do.
---
North Carolina based singer/songwriter Rosali Middleman has spent the last decade using her voice and guitar to construct tunes built upon the spectrum between joy and pain - deeply personal lyrics, profound vocals, and striking, heady guitar synchronizing as a perfect pair to deliver a very welcome and fresh perspective on folk rock and roll music.
On this newest collection of tunes, “Variable Happiness”, under the moniker Edsel Axle, her voice takes a winter hibernation to showcase the prodigious slow burn thump of her solo electric guitar playing. While this musical pivot may be a risk to some, the worlds of wilderness created within the music are easily navigated with clarity.
Recorded directly to a four-track cassette rig in the comfort of her own home- each chord struck exhales from the gear and onto magnetic tape, finding its true north, and throwing sand on the bonfire before it burns the foundation. First thought/best thought improvisations naturally trickling down and turning puddles into expansive streams of sound.
The opener, “Some Answer” seems to not have any question before it. As if it has always just been. A mode of intrinsic acceptance. Middleman confidently reigns in atonal midrange melodies and lets them rest in the bottom of the ocean. Every new movement coming up for air. Reviving consciousness, and letting go once more. The small combo amp on the recordings sounds like it’s being overloaded and exploding into a peace sign, before fading into the next tune.
The title track, “Variable Happiness” suggests that serenity is found within acceptance. It begins with a warm, simple, and circular groove. Bridging the giant landmasses of Fleetwood Mac’s “Albatross” and Loren Connors. The light boogie has surgical tremolo dirge doing major brain work and re-wiring. Coming in and out of a hiccup. An easy meditation that sounds like laying on the perfect area rug after the perfect day.
“Come Down From That Tree Now” isn’t so much a command as it is a peaceful suggestion. A neon glazed layer of arpeggios sits in the background, while Middleman wails fully in the foreground. An amalgamation that sounds like Windy and Carl records being blown apart by firecrackers in a bucket.
Through these six honey-soaked, deeply psychedelic, overdriven ohm-style meditations, “Variable Happiness” showcases the prodigious left-hand melodies, and ball peen hammer attack of Middleman’s right hand. Striking with great patience and humility. A true-blue guitar denizen of a heady state. A new benchmark in solo guitar recordings.
Each tune kicks the can down the dirt road a bit further, knowing it will eventually reach Valhalla. Remaining present and accepting happiness on a sliding scale. As varied as joy may be, these tunes suggest we can arrest the negative with meditation and patience.