Woodsman

Jammy Brooklyn-via-Denver trio Woodsman is gearing up to release its third album, Woodsman, on guitarist Trevor Peterson’s own Fire Talk Records. Lead single “Healthy Life” hits with a percussive starkness that feels fitting for a mid-career, self-titled album (and all its implications of a “return to form”), shedding the hazy vocals and ornamental noodling of their 2011 Rare Forms LP for something much more deliberate and crisp.

Says Peterson of the story behind the track, “After moving from Denver to Brooklyn in 2011 we went into the studio—a proper studio for the first time, with friend and engineer Daniel James Schlett. At the time his Strange Weather studio was on Broadway under the J train. We were stoked on the track instrumentally but knew it needed something more. We took a hand-held recorder up into the Subway and chatted with an MTA employee in the booth. He proceeded to tell us his secret to life and what he said was too real and made it in the track. The tune and his candidness sort of summed up this whole record for us, and we’re happy to finally share it.” Woodsman is out on February 4, 2014. [Fader]