Freak Scene #106: All Feels and the Breadwinners
Plus, Freak Scene finally has a concert calendar
This week in Freak Scene, we’ve got new releases from Easthampton band All Feels and also the Breadwinners, a trio of transplants who moved from Western Mass. to Los Angeles. Plus, check out the first-ever Freak Scene concert calendar at the end of this week’s newsletter!
Candace Clement was thinking a lot about borders and boundaries on All Feels’ first album, 2024’s This Place Is a Message. She’s more interested in portals and nostalgia on the Easthampton band’s new EP, Evasive Sentimental. While Clement has shifted her lyrical focus, the band hasn’t tinkered (much) with its musical approach: All Feels are very much an alt-pop band with a wistful streak on these five songs (plus one iPhone voice recording demo).
Clement’s plaintive, aching vocals are at the center of “Wild Bones,” which is full of bright, crackling guitars from Kate and Noah Dowd that dip and swirl around powerful rhythm parts from bassist Will Meyer and drummer Jon Shina. “Lucky If I Love You” has a more somber tone, with atmospheric guitars and a Rhodes keyboard drifting like clouds over a steady beat. Clement’s voice is plenty expressive on its own, but something magical happens when Kate Dowd adds tight harmonies, as if together their voices unlock hidden depths in the songs. It’s particularly powerful on “Wild Bones” and on “Goose Girl,” where Dowd’s voice slides unobtrusively up below Clement’s while squidges of guitar whirl around like a ground-spinner firecracker.
For various reasons, All Feels have been sitting on most of these songs for more than six months. The first track that the group release from this EP, “Mess,” came out last year (Freak Scene #70). With more of a shoegaze-country feel, it’s the outlier here. Yet the rest of Evasive Sentimental shows that “Mess” isn’t so much a departure as a demonstration of the band’s range — a range that will only grow more expansive as this lineup continues to gel.
(All Feels play tonight, Friday, Feb. 20, at the Drake in Amherst with Lost Film and Two Wrong Turns; tickets.)
The Breadwinners Are Fully Proofed on ‘Starter’
We’ve already learned that all three members of the Breadwinners had jobs driving bread delivery vans during the pandemic, so it makes sense that they’d stick with the theme on the title of their first album. Starter is a reference to sourdough starter, which you could make yourself during lockdown when commercial yeast was hard to find. As it happens, Jake Manzi, Jack DeMeo and Gabe Bernini made this Starter themselves, too.
Manzi and DeMeo wrote these nine songs, and then the trio of transplants from Western Mass. recorded them in Bernini’s Los Angeles studio. The result is a collection of featherlight pop tunes that emphasize breezy melody, with tons of vocal harmonies. They’re singing about classic pop subjects — namely, being in love, or else wondering where love went wrong. It’s the former on opener, “You Win,” where Manzi and DeMeo blend their voices over plush electric guitar licks and a piano vamp that mirrors the stutter of the beat. The harmonies are prismatic on “Do It Anyway,” where the narrator ruefully tries to untangle the crossed stars impeding a mutual infatuation. Manzi and DeMeo lean into the hook on the chorus, while layers of their wordless backing vocals push through punchy bass and guitars with a low-key jangle.
They sing wistful close harmonies from the start of “Promises,” a soulful, mostly acoustic number, while another slow jam, the overcast “Blue Memories,” finds the narrator having a hard time shaking off his heartache. The songs are of a piece until the last track, “People Everybody Everywhere,” which has a ’70s disco-funk thing happening with the dance-ready beat and subtle wah-wah guitar, coupled with vocals steeped in AutoTune for a latter-day pop warble. It's insidiously catchy, but the production overshadows the song, and the Breadwinners are at their best on Starter when they skip the additives and let the music go au naturel.
Upcoming Concerts
The Academy of Music in Northampton hosts Steve Earle July 7 (tickets).
Ryan Bingham & the Texas Gentlemen play June 1 at Tree House Brewing in South Deerfield (tickets).
The Iron Horse schedule features Griffin William Sherry April 3 (tickets), Kentucky singer-songwriter Cole Chaney with the Local Honeys April 10 (tickets), pop singer Caroline Kingsbury April 29 (tickets), Bill Callahan May 8 (tickets) and Shinyribs Aug. 28 (tickets)
My New Band Believe, featuring Cameron Picton of black midi, play June 2 at the Drake in Amherst (tickets).
The Dream Eaters, described as “the Carpenters meets Slayer,” play March 20 at the Shea Theatre in Turners Falls to help radio host Monte Belmonte celebrate his birthday (tickets).
The Space Ballroom presents nu-metal band Cheem April 9 (tickets), alt-rockers Failure May 14 (tickets), pop trio Trousdale June 2 (tickets), Mexican cumbia group Sonido Gallo Negro June 19 (tickets) and Portraits of an Apparition Aug. 2 (tickets).
We generally focus on independent venues here, but it’s worth noting that Wet Leg perform at Mohegan Sun June 14 (tickets).
That’s it for this week, apart from the concert calendar, which appears below. 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.
Freak Scene is free, but donations help make this happen, and are gratefully accepted. The links below will make sure you're contributing what you intend to. Previous issues are available in the online archive.
Concert Calendar
Adding a concert calendar was something I wanted to do right from the start. Turns out that putting one together is a gigantic hassle at first, which is why it took two years. But now it’s here! This is still a work in progress, and it’s too big to include the complete list in these emails — you can find the full calendar here. For now, let me know what you think, in the comments or by replying to this email.
This week’s shows (struck-through listings are sold out):
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