Album Review: “Love Is Love” And Woods Reminds You That
From the minute Woods’ Love Is Love began, I smiled. The new record goes straight for the “funkiness” of this sentiment, and how it makes you groove to life as if the sun never left the sky. Hence, I love Love Is Love because it reminds me, as it will you, that love is, actually, something you want.
It seems every song, currently, written is to show love’s duplicitous nature or how it can weaken you. These things are true, and Love Is Love does not ignore these realities. On the contrary, Woods wrote the album after the election, inspired by the darkness of our current times to rediscover why and how love wins and loses in this world. It may seem hard to admit that love does not win every battle, but, to Woods, music can heal because it presents the pain of being human as universal. “Bleeding Blue” and “Lost In The Crowd” capture the era of protests and spiritual defeat stirred by Trump’s dictatorship. “Love Is Love” starts the album with a mystical, almost investigative aura that prepares listeners to this album’s observance of love in how it moves, stays, leaves, and rebirths itself. Thus, the first three songs carry a slight somberness that fizzles around tracks like “Hit That Drum” and “Love Is Love (Sun On Time)”, which provide the soulful resistance to melancholia. Yet, before the transition from loss to hope, “Spring Is In The Air” comes in like a psychedelic revival born from the Woodstock Era. Its winding guitars and synth-waved keys churn like a sonic cosmos that reveals an obvious fact: love, life, and this earth are all apart of the universe.
From psych-rock to Ethiopian jazz, Woods used various, global influences to bring the universal feel they desired, and it worked. Love Is Love feels too big to be defined by genres, but seems blanketed by the gorgeous nature that is music. Woods’ capacity to capture the bleakness of this time and space under Trump, and transform it into a hope meant to elevate listeners and remind them that humanity goes through highs and lows because love is not linear. If love is life then we should never expect it to be a straight path, but, luckily the wistful, wishful voice of Jeremy Earl captures the sweetness of strength to keep humanity going. For More Information On Woods And To Buy Love Is Love On April 21 Click Here.
