You know how it is, after the logs have settled on the campfire, the tin plates cease to clang, and the mood of the evening is just about right to pull out the Powerbook and play a few finger-picked ditties around the fire. At least, that's how I imagine how it would be camping with Greg Davis. Having dabbled in the past with classical composition, electroacoustic sound-processing, hip-hop and boom-bap, et cetera, Davis hit upon his sound with his Carpark debut, Arbor. Drawing on the gentler sounds of acoustic folk, the instruments and warm notes were gently nudged into more random (or else more carefully considered) sound compositions, the process never overshadowing the trajectory of melody. He's grown nimble enough in his approach to pull out the computer and make it sound like anything but.
As the nomenclature would attest, the move has been made from singular tree to the more holistic Woods, as Davis has grown increasingly concerned with the arc of the album as a whole. "Red Barn Road" opens like the mouths of an amateur barbershop quartet for a half-minute, foreshadowing the voices to come. For "Brocade (Rewoven)", he takes the finger-picked strings and stretches them to resemble barren branches in a snow-covered cloister, slowly moving the trunks about and blurring the spaces in between as a kick-drum trudges about in evenly-paced steps. Seemingly sparse from the outside, once among the trees, they reveal a nuanced density of sound that you can get lost in. "Improved Dreaming" could be a Nobukazu Takemura campfire tale, all bird chirps and music boxes scattered so as to sync up with a woodland walk, the boots cracking wood and crunching snow in the surrounding silence. The Moondog-like step of "Shoes & Socks" gives way to gentle manipulations, the handclaps flickering about like shadows as the flame crackles and a slowly plucked guitar resonates in the ever-shifting dark.
The voices return midway through the disc for "At My Window", one of Brian Wilson's songs from 1970's underappreciated Sunflower, which, although thematically appropriate, falls flat, as Davis can't quite approximate the harmonies that the Beach Boys pulled off so effortlessly. While his voice is lacking here, the middle break billows into a keen arrangement not far removed from Jim O'Rourke's pop fantasias circa Bad Timing or Eureka. That influence also shines through on the title track, as the finger-picked figures get surrounded by circuses of piano, brass, clarinet, pedal steel, and upbeat handclaps, while subtle electronic textures shift about underneath it all.
Davis closes with a cover of The Incredible String Band's "Air", but again fails to properly pull off the vocals. With the solemn harmonium and choir-like backing, all I see is the Budweiser Clydesdales tromping through the fresh powder. When he's not so concerned with blatantly showing his pop pedigree, and instead allows the instrumentation to breathe and retain its dreamy and bucolic lilt, Curling Pond Woods is a fine twining of the natural patterns that can occur at once, out on a walk through the countryside and inside the head.
