James Jackson Toth a.k.a. Wooden Wand is one prolific dude. People who were taken by the man’s first few collaborations with The Vanishing Voice in the mid-00s are now drowning in Wand merchandise — the albums on Weird Forest, De Stijl, and 5RC (RIP); the seven volumes of the From the Road live series; the solo jaunts on Ecstatic Peace! and Young God; the brief stint with Rykodisc… and that’s leaving out about 100 other notable releases. Now, we all know that his finest moment was on our Darfur benefit compilation, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a boat/butt-load of other non-album hidden gems floating around. Toth dished out 100+ unreleased songs to those that pledged to his recent Kickstarter campaign, but that was just a warm-up round: enter the mammoth Archives Vol. 3 6-LP set, soon to be released by People in a Position to Know.
Fittingly packaged in a big ol’ silkscreened wooden box, Archives was slimmed down from about 400 unreleased tracks to a manageable but still stomachache-inducing 75 tunes. Each disc focuses on a different aspect of Mr. Wooden’s sprawling sound, with the first disc highlighting his “rocking” material, disc two showing off some “sincere love songs,” disc three leaning more toward the depressing end of the emotional spectrum, disc four consisting of an acoustic grab-bag, disc five compiling his “character” songs, and the final disc bringing it all back home with the best of his early lo-fi recordings.
Though Archives is only available on vinyl, those that preorder the box are going to get a digital sampler of sorts, with a few songs from each disc to keep you occupied while you wait for the elderly mailman to heave your wooden box up all those flights of stairs around Thanksgiving. There will also be a very limited pressing of each separate disc for anyone who already blew their cash on that Neutral Milk Hotel box last week. Check out a few more details on the pressing over here, or get back to work on the one song you’ve been working on for 15 years.
• Wooden Wand: http://www.woodenwand.org
• People in a Position to Know: http://piaptk.limitedpressing.com
