This week in Freak Scene, Wallace Field’s new EP Fantasy is peasantry pageantry, while Gentle Hen are back with their latest, Wink. Also, this weekend is the Northampton Jazz Festival: check here for details.

Fantasy is more than just the name of Wallace Field’s new EP— it’s a fitting description of the rich inner life she brings to these five songs. It’s a folky collection that emphasizes Field’s powerful voice on songs with a pastoral sensibility that falls somewhere between ’60s folk and medieval music, thanks to fingerpicked acoustic guitar and subtle accompaniment from harpsichord, cello, accordion and flute. It’s her first release since her album All Costs in 2023 (which I wrote about for the Boston Globe).

“I had this group of songs that kind of fit in what I call this peasant world,” the Shelburne Falls native says over coffee at Woodstar Cafe in Northampton. “There are ties to being a peasant, connecting that back to modern-day tech feudalism, and then having an older sound that calls back to traditional folk arrangements.”

Wallace FieldFantasy

Inspired by the 2023 book The Age of Insecurity by Astra Taylor, Field sings opening song “The Commons” from the perspective of a peasant woman farming communal land and reflecting on the impermanence of the world around her — “coping with late-stage capitalism by romanticizing feudalism,” Field says, laughing. Later, she clings to a beautiful dream on the title track and considers what-ifs after her narrator makes an unexpected thrift-store find on “Wedding Gown,” where Field accompanies herself with a somber figure on guitar.

That one, she says, came “from my love of thrifted white gowns. Like, who did wear this? What was their story?”

After processing a passel of strong emotions on All Costs, Field stepped outside of herself with the songs on Fantasy, which she recorded with the Berkshires musician Michael Lesko producing. “I like my EPs to be like palate cleansers between my albums, so I can create fantastical worlds that don't necessarily have to do with my life day-to-day,” Field says. “They can just be a sonic world you can go and visit and live in that fantasy for five songs, and then you’re out of it.”

Field’s approach to the EP was in some ways a reaction to popular culture that feels packaged and contrived. She and Lesko ran the songs through analog tape to give them more of a lived-in feel, and she used 35mm film to shoot publicity photos and art for the album cover (in a downed tree across the street from her house in Northfield).

“I just wanted it to be kind of stripped down, against this AI moment of everything being perfect and polished,” Field says. “Part of it is just embracing the beauty of the imperfection and what is real in this moment where everything is so commercialized. You know when you're engaging with art that feels mass-produced with no soul. People can feel it.”

Gentle Hen Tip You a ‘Wink’ on Eighth LP

Even singer and guitarist Henning Ohlenbusch can’t quite believe Gentle Hen are already releasing their eighth album. “It feels like we're not doing anything and then all of a sudden many years later, we’ve got all this stuff,” he says by email. Wink is the latest entry in an ever-expanding catalog (he’s also released six solo albums), and it has all those Gentle Hen touchstones: bright guitars, wistful melodies and a gentle sense of whimsy.

Gentle HenWink

When Ohlenbusch sings, “This is the best day of our lives / At least until tomorrow” on the chiming, effervescent pop number “Best Day of Our Lives,” he means it, and that sensibility runs all the way through Wink. Sometimes it’s right there in the song title: “Let’s Stay Up to Watch the Sun Rise,” for example, when he suggests keeping an enjoyable evening going all the way through the dawn. With trebly guitars circling around a steady, thrumming bassline from Max Germer and Ohlenbusch’s limber voice lifting up in the chorus, the idea seems more inviting than exhausting. Elsewhere, the foursome (also including Ken Maiuri on keyboards and guitar and Brian Marchese on drums) sounds playful as they ride a ska-adjacent beat through “Seaside House,” while the big guitars and harmony vocals on “You’re Not Anywhere” evoke a mid-’60s British Invasion sound, refracted through Western Mass.

Bringing it all back home (to borrow a phrase) is what Gentle Hen has been doing with their musical influences all along. Since getting started in 2001, the band has put their own distinctive spin on Beatles-esque pop, old-school garage rock, the ’80s indie-rock underground and more. From “Comfort Zone” on Wink to “Let’s Go Get Lost” on 2023’s The Whole Point of the Trip or “College Town” from 2017’s Sneaking Up on the Moon, Gentle Hen’s music is one version of what it sounds like not just to live here, but to make a life here.

Upcoming Concerts

The Iron Horse in Northampton hosts the Slambovian Circus of Dreams Christmas show Dec. 11 (tickets), the Nields Feb. 6 (tickets) and a pair of shows with Livingston Taylor Feb. 28 (early and late). Billy Prine's show Jan. 24 has been canceled.

The Drake features Steve Gunn Nov. 4 (tickets).

Northampton singer Erin Morse plays an EP release show Tuesday, Sept. 29 for her upcoming Tales, Tall and Dove, with Eldest Daughter and Reuben Toadstool at the new Blackbird Cafe on Pleasant Street in Northampton. The Grays are there Oct. 9.

Indie singer and songwriter Phil Elverum’s Mount Eerie project plays Oct. 17 at the Academy of Music in Northampton (tickets). Also coming: Roridgo y Gabriela Oct. 26 (tickets), sea chanty specialists the Longest Johns Nov. 10 (tickets), Peter Wolf and the Midnight Travelers Nov. 12 (tickets), Haley Heynderickx Dec. 19 (tickets) and Italian acoustic guitar quartet 40 Fingers (tickets).

Thao plays a full-band show Feb. 23 at the Space Ballroom in Hamden (tickets).

Stone Church in Brattleboro hosts Minibeast and the Vermen Nov. 19 (tickets) and Low Cut Connie Dec. 28 (tickets). I wrote about Low Cut Connie's latest album for Paste.

This Weekend’s Shows

The Star Family Singers, Hoonah, Daring Coyotes, Jetties and Pink Edwards play a house show tonight, Friday, in Greenfield (email [email protected] for the address). The gig is a fundraiser for Northampton musician Norma Jean Haynes, who sustained serious brain injuries in a car crash in June. Haynes, who performs as Norma Dream (her album Mercy Drops came out last October), last month awoke from a coma, and is now working to regain function at a rehabilitation center in Boston. The brain injury comes on the heels of Haynes’ diagnosis in 2025 with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. All proceeds from the show will go to a GoFundMe account to help pay for her care. Donations accepted here.

The full concert calendar is available here for paid subscribers. That it for this week. Thank you for reading! Previous issues are available in the online archive.