This is new music and it looked interesting to me. The lead singer looks a bit like a well-fed version of Gregg Allman (back before Gregg Allman started looking like a better-fed version of himself), and he’s even got one of those fancy shirts with the embroidery on the shoulders, which is always a good sign. And then you go to their website and they have a quote from some magazine claiming that the band is along the lines of its Georgia forebears, the Allman Brothers. The review is part of a little Lazy Susan of reviews that are quite impressive, and made me stop and wonder what was wrong with me for not giving this CD a 4-star rating. I guess I’m missing something. Because absent some motorcycle mishaps in the Lost Trailers’ past that I’m not aware of, I think it’s a stretch to mention them in the same breath with the Allmans.

Welcome to the Woods is pleasant enough. It’s very tastefully packaged and has an assortment of song styles, none of which I was crazy about, but none of which bothered me too much, either. I found myself noticing more similarities to Hootie and the Blowfish than to the Allman Brothers, but when the two bands came to a fork in the road, Hootie took the branch that had really good lyrics growing alongside it and The Lost Trailers took the other branch. When the time comes in a song for the guitar break, a nice, predictable little guitar track comes in, plods along just long enough to keep you from getting bored with it, and ends without leaving much of an impression. I didn’t hear one note I wasn’t expecting to hear.