It’s just an album, they told me. Just some music by a band, they said, expectantly bobbing their heads to its melodies, fingers tapping along to the beat. But, by sweet serenity, they never warned me about the existential crisis I would experience upon laying my tender ears unto the folksy resonance of Woods’ fifth studio album, "At Echo Lake." "At Echo Lake," an album as hushed and tranquil as its eponymous place of origin, drove its verdant claws directly into my delicate soul. The folksy meanderings were not a humble creek burbling beside a picnic site – they were a raging, melancholic river carving through the granite of my conviction, threatening to flood the tranquil town of my sanity. And, oh silent moon, did it? "Bend Beyond" begins, as if mimicking the sounds of a guitar-toting bird wooing the sun into a reluctant dawn. But soon enough, it heralds the incoming typhoon of heartache wrapped in the guise of an innocent, strummed tune; waves of emotional turmoil approaching under the watchful eyes of an indifferent cosmic ballet. The chaos in its tranquillity sears into my defenceless heart, inflicting wounds that fester with the ghost of crushed aspirations and unrequited love. "Suffering Season," a bleak montage of human despair played out to the tune of an ironically merry instrumental, crashed into me like a stampede of wildebeest fleeing the shadow of a predatory cloud. The lyric "But when will it all… end?" whispered into my consciousness, raising questions I'd spent years burying beneath layers of meaningless small talk and mall-bought self-esteem. For every folksy tune infiltrating the remnants of my imploded psyche, there was always an echoing companion carrying a load of disproportionate sadness. "Pick Up," a light-footed serenade with a fleetingly cheerful chorus, fooled my heart into a state of temporal bliss, only to be followed by "Time Fading Lines." The song, melancholier than a mournful ghost lost in limbo, faintly echoed in my heart (or was it my liver?), summoning all my buried regrets, culminating in an intense display of remorse and self-examination. "Can you imagine when it's gone?" the ghostlike vocalist implores. And after being steeped in such meditative melancholy, could I afford not to? True, "At Echo Lake" climbed irrefutably to number 31 on Pitchfork Media's list of 'The Top 50 Albums of 2010', but did anyone consider the real cost behind its folksy paths? The wounded hearts? The inconsolably sobbing listeners, huddled in their living rooms, clutching collectable vinyl records of past joys with such intensity that they almost morph into grotesque human-jukebox hybrids? A wise person—or perhaps it was an irreversibly optimistic mug caption—once declared, "Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass, but learning to dance in the rain." So, to the despairingly beautiful melodies of "At Echo Lake," I will continue my sad, solitary waltz, crying in the woods, heart throbbing to the rhythm of the folksiest echo from the deepest corner of the lake. Indeed, it’s just an album, just some music by a band, stripped of its glitz and glamour. But therein lies its unspeakable power—its ability to crack open the buttoned-up vaults of our hearts, toughened by the world's blinding pretense. And for that, Woods, I begrudgingly thank you. You’ve made me cry, but at least I remember I can.