Freak Scene #11: Sunburned Hand of the Man Seek Radiance on 'Nimbus'
A Guide to Music in Western Mass. (and sometimes Connecticut)
This week in Freak Scene, Sunburned Hand of the Man return with Nimbus, Daniel Hales confounds autocorrect with the latest from his project Selah haleS, and there are a lot of concerts on the horizon.
The great thing about Sunburned Hand of the Man is also the tricky thing: the free-form band is always in flux. What’s happening at this concert, or on that album, happens in the moment, without forethought or planning, making it a one-of-a-kind experience that will not — cannot — be repeated. In that way, and others, Sunburned Hand of the Man only really exists in the present tense. Nearly 60 people have been active in the experimental band at various points over the past 30 years, and the lineup can change from one performance to the next. The group’s habit of recording everything, all the time, has resulted in north of 200 releases as LPs, CD-Rs and multimedia digital files.
That makes Sunburned Hand of the Man a group that’s “very hard to start to even pull a thread on,” music writer Allison Hussey said in the first of an eight-episode podcast about the band, “No Way Out: An Oral History of Sunburned Hand of the Man,” released by Aquarium Drunkard. Suffice to say that the group first took shape in Boston around John Moloney and Robert Thomas. Eventually, many of the core members migrated down the Mass Pike to the Northampton area. It was around here (at member Adam Langellotti’s Big Blue studio in Turners Falls, to be exact) that Sunburned Hand of the Man recorded their latest album, Nimbus. Like any Sunburned project, it’s a wide-ranging collection, flush (in this case) with psychedelia comprising meandering keyboard parts, clatters of percussion, reed instruments, effects-treated guitars and more.
Many of the tracks are more like inscrutable soundscapes than strictly defined songs, not least because they sometimes frame sprawling spoken-word missives. The poet (and UMass professor) Peter Gizzi delivers two of them: the title track, and also “Consider the Wound,” an 8 1/2-minute discourse backed by a blend of drifting synthesizer and keyboard parts that hang over Gizzi’s precise, dire enunciation like a foreboding bank of low gray clouds.
Elsewhere, though, the group turns to more traditional song structures: Phil Franklin’s “Ishkabibble Magoo” is concise and hooky, with strummed acoustic guitar and an indelible vocal melody, augmented by harmony vocals from Sarah Gibbons. Other tracks fall somewhere between those two poles: “The Lollygaggers” fades in with the musicians in mid-vamp, drums and a busy bassline locking into a groove beneath layers of synthesizers for an effect that calls to mind the buzzing dreams of slumbering robots. A chiming harpsichord-like part underpins “Brainticket,” which includes the rise and fall of a dry, elastic bass sound and swirls of wah-wah guitar and keyboards. Elsewhere, the instrumental “Walker Talker” features gnashing tangles of guitar from Jeremy Pisano over bass and drums, with ornamentation from Conrad Capistran on Mellotron.
There’s no question that free-form music can be a daunting lift for newcomers. As a listener, it's not always clear how to even approach music that follows its own rules, which are often invented in real time. Perhaps the best way to get acclimated is to simply jump in. Nimbus is a fine place to start.
Selah haleS Opens Up His ‘Haunted Heart’
When Daniel Hales isn’t busy with the Frost Heaves & haleS, the Greenfield musician is holding it down with a side project called Selah haleS. It’s an alter-ego of sorts for his more downhearted musical impulses. “I save my saddest songs for Selah haleS in an attempt to buffer the Frost Heaves catalog from excess heartache,” Hales says by email.
Indeed, Welcome to My Haunted Heart is the title of his latest EP as Saleh haleS, and it delivers as promised on seven tracks sifting through the aftermath of what sounds like the most wrenching breakup of all time. These tracks do sound haunted, with funereal tempos, guitar parts that creak and sigh like a warped wooden floor, and Hales’ voice coming through a murky curtain of reverb. He sounds tormented on “Someone Who Doesn’t Love You (But Used To),” where a distant backing vocal from Chris Goudreau echoes Hales’ murmured lead part. There’s an angrier vibe on “Hard Day at the Proving Grounds” — “They couldn’t prove a goddamn thing,” Hales sings, accompanied by tremulous guitars and a bracing harmonica part.
Songs from Welcome to My Haunted Heart and the previous Saleh haleS album, Unstable Oscillators, will make up about half the set when Hales performs with the Frost Heaves Saturday, April 20, at 2 p.m. at the Amherst Sustainability Fest on the Amherst Town Common. They also play at 7 p.m. at Luthier’s Co-op in Easthampton, with Chris Goudreau at 6 p.m., Fancy Trash at 8 p.m. and Muddy Ruckus at 9:30 p.m.
Upcoming concerts
There are a bunch! For starters, Northampton band the Greys performs Saturday at the Parlor Room, a gig that coincides with the release of their soulful new single “Mona.” Lisa Bastoni is there Sunday (I wrote about her new album On the Water in Freak Scene #5), and Northampton singer Jake Manzi plays Thursday, April 25. (I wrote here about his 2023 album Here She Comes.) Tickets for those shows are available here.
Flywheel Arts Collective presents Dear Nora, Ruth Garbus Trio and Northampton’s bobbie (much more about them soon) Sunday at Holyoke Media, 15 Suffolk St., Holyoke. Ticket information is here.
Next, the Field Day festival relocates this year from Guilford, Vt., to the Three County Fairgrounds in Northampton May 31-June 1. The Friday lineup features Nation of Language, Geese, the Heavy Heavy, a tribute to Nirvana by soul collective the Nth Power, Prewn, Hallway, Sapiens Joyride and Big Destiny. Saturday’s lineup offers Indigo De Souza, Dehd, Butcher Brown, Sheer Mag, Thus Love, Sun Parade, Native Sun, Love Crumbs, DJ Quills, Cooper B. Handy’s LUCY project, Sweet Lightning, Dead Gowns, Upstairs District and Brunch. Tickets are here.
Some new bookings from DSP Shows: Big Head Todd & the Monsters play Aug. 19 at Tree House Brewing in South Deerfield. The Academy of Music in Northampton hosts Morgan Wade Sept. 26 and Angel Olsen solo, doing “Songs from the Archives,” Sept. 27. At the Iron Horse in Northampton, Keifer Sutherland performs June 21, Hurray for the Riff Raff plays July 7, Al Stewart & the Empty Pockets stop in Aug. 11, James McMurtry is there Sept. 11, Tophouse performs Sept. 28 and Darrell Scott is there Oct. 2. Ticket information for DSP concerts is available here.
Next week: In These Trees, a.k.a. Binnie Klein, a longtime DJ on WPKN-FM (89.5) in Bridgeport, teamed up with the Australian singer Tartie to make an album called The Quiver.
To submit your music for coverage consideration, send a note to erdanton at gmail or reply to this email. Check out these guidelines first. You can find previous issues of Freak Scene in the archive. (Freak Scene is free, but donations are gratefully accepted.)