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Apr 14, 2014The album is easily the most solid offering from the Woods camp to date, besting even the production of its incredibly strong predecessor and presenting the songs with even more clarity and interesting choices than ever before.
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May 1, 2014A few moments of woozy, crystal-strewn guitar, and we're right back where we left them.
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Apr 15, 2014The band’s tendency to venture into festival-ready rhythms and guitar noodling has remained an integral constant on their releases. With Light And With Love is no exception, but it also finds the band exercising their unique roots-pop expertise to an even deeper effect than before.
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Apr 18, 2014While With Light and With Love might sound more instantly accessible than previous Woods albums, it also shows that it might not be a good thing for Woods to tinker with their most defining quality: the intimacy of their songs.
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Apr 14, 2014What With Light And With Love lacks in surprises, it more than makes up for with quality.
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Apr 14, 2014Long-time listeners will revel in the subtle sonic shifts but the rest of us are still waiting for the band to make that major artistic breakthrough we know they're capable of.
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Apr 15, 2014In 2014, Woods still stand tall, having morphed from a lo-fi weirdo electric folk band on their own fringe label into a veritable lighthouse on the now populous independent coast.
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MojoApr 23, 2014Adroit instrumentation and elegant melodies from the NY quartet. [May 2014, p.96]
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Apr 14, 2014There’s a rare moment of foreboding on the briefly gloomy ‘Feather Man’, but the likes of ‘Shining’ and the Avi Buffalo-style ‘Only The Lonely’ are representative of an optimistic and sprightly record.
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Apr 15, 2014Even the most drawn-out, mind-bending stretches on the album serve a purpose, managing to avoid sounding like sonic filler.
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Apr 14, 2014“Breakthrough”, “masterpiece”, “bold leap”--those aren’t words that really seem applicable to With Light and With Love, or Woods for that matter, but they’re allowing themselves to be extremely likable for a larger crowd.
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Apr 16, 2014Turns out that on this album you get to hear Woods in perhaps the purest form yet, even as you know that form will change again for the next record. Until then, embrace the bittersweet now.
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May 29, 2014On the whole, Woods have produced an inviting, communal listen seemingly designed to soundtrack lazy summer afternoons.
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Apr 16, 2014With Light and With Love sounds bigger, though, more accessible, conceived with an ear toward top-down, tear-out-of-town FM anthems of summers past.
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Apr 29, 2014Mainstream baiting notwithstanding, With Light & With Love is the best Woods record yet, a tinkering of the charmingly sincere folksiness of Bend Beyond into something even more muscular and full-bodied.
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Apr 14, 2014As this year's laid-back, folk-tinged efforts go so far, Woods haven't quite packed the sort of emotional punch that, say, Beck did on Morning Phase, but they have provided further evidence that they're slowly emerging as masters of their mellow-pop craft.
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Apr 14, 2014On With Light and With Love, Woods once again prove that they can casually strike the perfect balance between imaginative pop confections and untethered psychedelic jams.
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UncutApr 14, 2014There's a mellow-late-Beatles vibe at play, especially on "Full Moon," and this may be the band's finest to date. [May 2014, p.83]
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May 9, 2014Next to the digitized, future-slicked sounds of other latter-day psych totems such as Lonerism or Merriweather Post Pavilion, it feels like a reverent, immersive ramble through the corridors of lysergic pop history.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 10 out of 12
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Mixed: 1 out of 12
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Negative: 1 out of 12
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May 11, 2014
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Apr 20, 2014