In the early days of Woods, the Brooklyn-based band spontaneously jammed with the microphones on, later editing and layering sections to build a song out of what was thought to be nothing.Now on its ninth LP, "City Sun Eater in the River of Light," Woods sought to return to that early style with the refinement of newly acquired skills, said Jarvis Taveniere, Woods' multi-instrumentalist."City Sun Eater in the River of Light" pushes Woods into new territory without abandoning the band's folk-rock hallmarks. Punctuated by Jeremy Earl's signature falsetto, Woods weaves together horns, jammy guitars and various global influences in signature sunny fashion, juxtaposed with lyrics that reveal unease and anxiety.Taveniere, 37, called from Fort Stockton, Texas, to speak ahead of the band's show Saturday at the Ottobar. This interview has been edited and condensed.You tapped into some unique influences on "Sun City Eater in the River of Light" — for example, Ethiopian jazz. Was it a conscious decision to bring in new influences and sounds?It was. But also, we spend a lot of time together, we're traveling together, listening to music together, so we're usually pretty much on the same page. ... We've always been a band where whatever influences us we can incorporate into what we do. Nothing's off-limits musically. I don't think we would do anything too insane, but after the last record going into this one I just wanted to get back into that. Jazz, whatever kind of music we're listening to, Motown, reggae. I don't think the influences are that extreme or that on the nose in our interpretations of them, but they're definitely in there. The conversation just went as far as being like, "Let's just do whatever we want."You and Jeremy [Earl] are the only remaining founding members of the band. How has your working relationship evolved?It's kind of been the same for awhile. Maybe the situations are different or our skill sets are different, but I think we've both just gotten better at what we do. When I got involved I took on the recording duties and over the years I've just gotten better at that, and in the same way, I think Jeremy's become more of an interesting and weirder songwriter and his voice got so much stronger. I feel like we've both just been developing, but our relationship has always developed in this vacuum of Woods, so it still feels the same.You record other bands in addition to recording Woods. Are you a different kind of producer with other bands, and what skills learned outside the band do you bring back to Woods?There was definitely a moment or a project or two that I did — there was a Widowspeak album in particular, their first record, it was one of the first records I did, where just seeing what they needed, what direction they needed, and where I could step in and where I could be useful, it definitely made me go back to Woods after that with a new confidence. Also, maybe sort of knowing my strengths a little bit better, because I got to try them out in a different environment, which is still always good. Every project that I do, I always learn something that I can take back to Woods and things I learn in Woods that I can use in other projects.You live in New York, but you're often called a sunny, California-sounding band. To what extent does location influence your music?It's really hard to say. I think the California thing, there's a lot of romantic notions of certain music scenes in California. The L.A. singer-songwriter thing and San Francisco jam bands, like the Grateful Dead. So I guess I've always had a romantic notion of it, especially being from New York and growing up there. I've never lived anywhere else, so when I go to California a couple times a year, I still can't shake this sort of romantic, "Yay! Yay, we're going to California!"Woods has released a lot of albums. Do you make an effort to have a high output, or does it come naturally?We slowed it down a bit. The first phase of the band, we were all playing in different bands in New York, really young like, "How do we get signed? How do we do this? Why don't we get the bigger opening slot?" And then at some point we sort of retreated and we were like, we just want to make cool stuff; [expletive] all this, [expletive] the rat race. … Once we became more of a touring band and the more we started to enjoy touring, then it just naturally slowed down the output of the albums. The whole doing an album every year and doing it really quickly and spontaneously was a big part of the band, but that phase of the band is kind of over because we did it so much, and it was time for our new phase.What is your new phase? Do you have a vision for Woods' future?Now that we have a more solid lineup, it's really fun to take the nugget of a song idea and just work it out with the band and see the way the musicians actually interact with each other. In the past it was just a studio project and we would just layer it. Jeremy would play drums and I would play bass and the a lot of the dynamics were kind of faked with overdubs instead of the people in the room actually looking at each other and getting more intense because they're feeding off each other's energy. Now that we actually have a band, that's the new phase, that it's more of an actual band. And we have people who collaborate and we have people who maybe aren't in the band full time but who are are always around and always contributing.