Woods - “Death Rattles”
Picking a song from At Echo Lake wasn’t easy. It’s an album chock full of great songs, but I’m going with popular favorite “Death Rattles” because it’s a nice little encapsulation of all the things they do well elsewhere. Woods get a lot of credit (including from me) for the vital, creeping sense of mystery in their work, but it can be tough to articulate exactly where that haunting vibe comes from. In this case, I think it’s the way the song never quite ‘arrives.’ Notice how there’s no bass guitar (though one is suggested by the low rhythm guitar) and no kick drum (save for one little bump at the very end). “Death Rattles” floats along at arm’s length because, quite literally, there is no bottom end to hold it down. The sad, slowly rotating paisley riff is an ideal complement to Jeremy Earl’s alien falsetto and fevered reverb (which a friend of mine compared to those old plastic toy microphones with a spring inside that made your voice echo), draping the whole thing in dark shades of blue.
