This week in Freak Scene, we check out the first album from Northampton singer and songwriter Diana Daniels in advance of her show this weekend in Northampton, and Jake Manzi has a new project called the Breadwinners, featuring some Western Mass. friends who, like him, have landed in Los Angeles.

With somber acoustic guitar and quiet, pretty vocals on the opening track, Diana Daniels’ first album starts off like it’s going to be a fairly straightforward folk outing. It doesn’t take long, though, for her music to grow richer and more nuanced on I Wake to Birdsongs, which shows a surprisingly wide musical range. The Northampton singer, a 2022 Amherst College graduate, performs Saturday, Jan. 31, at the Parlor Room in Northampton, with Bones Forever (tickets).

Diana DanielsI Wake To Birdsongs

She began writing songs for what became I Wake to Birdsongs while she was still an undergraduate, Daniels recently told the Daily Hampshire Gazette. Though she spent a few years after college living in Brooklyn, where she played saxophone in the indie band Boys Go to Jupiter, I Wake to Birdsongs has a more pastoral sensibility on songs rooted in acoustic guitar and banjo.

That’s not all that’s going on here, though. After the placid, stately opener, “Headchange,” Daniels begins salting her songs with other musical elements that open them up in subtle ways. There’s a restrained drum beat that tethers her steady guitar strumming on “Drifter,” which blooms into resonant piano chords, electric guitar licks and layered vocal harmonies. Later, on “The North Is on Fire,” Daniels and producer Dan Langa build the track from acoustic guitar, upright bass and vocals to include a bobbing beat and electric guitar textures.

If “The North Is on Fire” has a topical perspective that evokes the wildfires that have devastated Daniels’ native California (as well as the Pacific Northwest, and swaths of Canada), she comes at “Absence” from a more personal place: Western Mass., which she was pre-emptively missing before she relocated after college (she moved back last year). Daniels laces the track with horns, a slinky, vaguely Brazilian rhythm and vocal harmonies that call to mind classic early-’60s pop.

Whatever the vibe on any individual number, each track on I Wake to Birdsongs sounds of a piece with the others. It’s no small thing to have developed a distinctive musical voice right off the blocks, and Daniels throughout sounds only like herself.

The Breadwinners Debut with ‘She Says Things’

When Los Angeles was drawing Americans westward in search of new lives during the Great Depression nearly a century ago, many of them ended up hanging out with people they had known from back home. So there’s plenty of precedent for Jake Manzi, Jack DeMeo and Gabriel Bernini, Northampton natives who have each ended up in L.A. That’s where Manzi and DeMeo teamed up as the Breadwinners, wrote a bunch of songs together and recorded them with Bernini, formerly of LuxDeluxe.

Their first single, “She Says Things,” is full of sunny vocal harmonies (speaking of classic pop!) that sound like California in the early ’60s, or like something Big Al Anderson would have been proud to have written.

Manzi in a Substack post explains the origin of the band’s name. “There was a time when Gabe, Jack and I all worked for the same bakery delivering bread in Los Angeles,” he wrote. “It was deep in the COVID-y days of 2020 and we were independently cruising around the empty streets of L.A. all hopped up on cold brew, blasting music in focaccia-filled Sprinter vans. These were formative experiences, and it’s something that binds us together … like gluten.”

“She Says Things” is from the Breadwinners’ forthcoming album Starter, which is due Feb. 20.

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Upcoming Concerts

Tonight, Teen Driver, True Jackie, Don't Tell Iris and the Maladaptive play the Marigold Theater in Easthampton; admission starts at $10.

There's like two feet of snow piled up in my yard, but summer will come eventually, and when it does, the Indigo Girls will play Aug. 27-28 at the Pines Theater in Look Park in Northampton (tickets for the first night and the second night).

The Iron Horse hosts guitar ace Stanley Jordan April 8 (tickets), singer, songwriter and UMass grad Lily Fitts May 2 (tickets), Richard Shindell May 14 (tickets), Adam Ezra Group May 16 (tickets), country singer Joshua Ray Walker June 4 (tickets), Albert Cummings June 25 (tickets), Philly indie-rockers Mo Lowda & the Humble July 16 (tickets).

The Drake features pop singer-songwriter Kaleb Cohen March 26 (tickets), Kids That Fly April 2 (tickets), the Grateful Dead tribute Bearly Dead April 17 (tickets) and L.A. soul combo Thee Sinseers with the Altons April 24 (tickets)

Courtesy of 413ska, the Toasters play April 24 at the Marigold (tickets).

Perennial play Holyoke Media Feb. 20 with Big Girl and Sapien Joyride; admission is $10.

College Street Music Hall in New Haven hosts Modest Mouse June 4 (tickets), Spoon with the Beths June 21 (tickets), both of whom also play the Green River Festival, and riot grrrl standard-bearers Bikini Kill Sept. 21 (tickets). The Feb. 19 show with Big Head Todd & the Monsters has been postponed, though there’s no new date yet. (A copy editor I used to work with at the Courant said “postponed” without a new date meant “canceled.”)

The Space Ballroom in Hamden features Kids That Fly March 26 (tickets), the Casualties May 3 (tickets), Lily Fitts May 15 (tickets), King Tuff May 21 (tickets) and Napalm Death May 23 (tickets).

Connecticut bands the Bargain and American Elm perform Feb. 22 at the Kate in Old Saybrook (tickets).

That’s a wrap on this week — thank you for reading! If you like what you’ve seen, please share. Also, I’m always open to submissions. You can send music for coverage consideration to erdanton at gmail or reply to this email. Check out these guidelines first.

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