Freak Scene #110: Bella Comets Focus on Harmony on 'Pain's Echo'
Plus, new music from the Unlucky Shots, In These Trees and Jake Manzi, who never rests
We’re stuffed full this week in Freak Scene. We’ve got the new album by Bella Comets, formerly the Capitulators, along with an EP from the Unlucky Shots, a single from In These Trees and another new track from the always-busy Jake Manzi. Let’s go:
As with so many before/after examples, the pandemic was the catalyst for Peter Sax to reinvent his band. Before Covid, Sax’s group the Capitulators was a quartet playing shoe-gazey indie-rock songs full of big, fuzzed-over guitars. But bassist Josh Levy emerged from lockdown with a bunch of his own material and he, Sax and drummer Noam Schatz shifted their focus to what became Outro.
The change coincided with Sax’s growing desire to focus more on harmony singing in the Capitulators — “the most compelling part of the band,” he says, and not always compatible with the group’s looming thicket of guitars. So, he recruited his wife, Jessica Sax, to sing with him, and continued working on his own music at home. More recently, Sax changed the Easthampton group’s name to Bella Comets, using Schatz’s Un/lucky Shots saga as a cautionary tale. (Bella Comets perform tonight, March 20, at Luthier’s Co-op in Easthampton with the Unlucky Shots and Bring it to Bear, the project of Outro’s fourth member Adam Zucker with Kris Delmhorst, Jason Smith and, tonight, Anand Nayak.)
The Saxes’ harmonies are the focal point of Bella Comets’ first album, Pain’s Echo, though Peter Sax found enough room for layers of textured guitars, too. The results are often spellbinding. Jess and Peter’s respective voices are distinctive on their own, and the way the pair harmonize blends them in a way that can feel profound, especially when they sing in close harmony. Over writhing electric guitars on “Real Love,” his voice is right beneath hers like a shadow just before noon. On the atmospheric album opener “Wild Things,” their vocals diverge for a moment here and there before locking back in together. Peter Sax sings “Emergency” by himself, his voice obscured by effects as caustic, alarm-like guitars cut through the churn of the track. Later, on “Like a Sound,” he starts alone before Jess joins him, her voice floating in with ghostly subtlety while keyboards and guitars drift past.
Though Peter Sax has spent plenty of time over the years playing in bands — he and Schatz met as students at Wesleyan, where they formed two-thirds of the late-’90s/early-’00s group the Mobius Band — his primary form of musical expression has always been creating loops out of layers of sound, a process he finds meditative.
“After having a striving kind of relationship with music earlier in life, I found it can play a key role in settling me down, and just having some time in the day that feels good, as long as I don’t approach it in a goal-oriented way that’s about a finished product,” Sax says. “This isn’t arts & crafts to me, it’s therapy and it’s church.”
Unlucky Shots Are Back with ‘Line Up’ EP
Speaking of the Unlucky Shots, the past few months have been turbulent for the Northampton band. First the group had to change its name after another band trademarked “the Lucky Shots.” Then they heard from someone claiming to be in a different band called the Unlucky Shots, which almost certainly doesn’t actually exist (and was the subject of perhaps the most bonkers story I’ve ever written, for the Boston Globe). Also, they have a new EP, Line Up.
It's four tracks that came out of sessions for the band’s most recent album, last year’s Second Tongue, though they have a thornier feel. They’re songs of exploration, but the restless kind, where questions don’t always have answers. Noam Schatz and Anand Nayak wrap these songs in unruly snarls of guitar: they boil up between the vocals on opener “Yer Blind,” and brood darkly on “Ghosts All Along,” while drummer Mike Benoit and bassist Jim Bliss keep everything rooted.
Though Line Up has a moodier vibe than Second Tongue, there’s a fierce joy at the heart of these tracks. Making Second Tongue was the Unlucky Shots’ most collaborative effort so far, and even if the subject matter here is darker, the sense of camaraderie is evident, and irresistible.
In These Trees Single Celebrate Simone de Beauvoir
Connecticut radio DJ, poet and songwriter Binnie Klein is back with the new single “Simone.” It’s the latest entry by her project In These Trees, a rotating set of collaborations that has landed this time on Loudboy, the alter-ego of Woodstock, N.Y., guitarist and singer John Andrews, and his Woodstock acquaintance Sarah Fimm, a singer and songwriter in her own right. Klein wrote the lyrics to “Simone,” co-wrote the melody and musical arrangement with Andrews, who produced it, while Fimm sang the lead vocal.
Klein wrote the lushly arranged folk song about Simone de Beauvoir, the French writer and activist, who is considered a foundational influence on modern feminism thanks to her 1949 book The Second Sex.
“She’s an overlooked feminist I wanted to put attention on. I was inspired by her physical endurance via her 25-mile hikes in addition to her prolific writings,” says Klein, who also wanted to move away from writing songs rooted in autobiography. “I like women with what I think of as ‘large minds.’ She was a powerhouse.”
Klein’s first project as In These Trees, a collaboration with the Australian singer Tartie, came out in 2024.
Jake Manzi Finds ‘Trouble’ on New Single'
Jake Manzi doesn’t seem to be much for downtime. The Western Mass.-born singer and Los Angeles transplant is back with a new solo single, just a few weeks after the release of Starter, his first album as part of the Breadwinners, a collaboration with fellow East-turned-West Coasters Gabe Bernini and Jack DeMeo.
“The Trouble” is replete with keyboards, opening with complementary parts from an organ with a whirring Leslie-speaker effect and bright piano. Manzi takes a rueful tack as he sings about an all-consuming infatuation: “You don’t know the trouble I’m in,” he sings. “’Cause when you go, my trouble begins.”
Manzi’s new single is from his third album, Getting Somewhere, which comes out June 12 on Bandcamp (pre-order it here). Manzi performs June 13 at the Parlor Room.
Upcoming Concerts
Here are this week’s newly announced concerts. The full concert calendar is available here.
Tree House Brewery in South Deerfield hosts G. Love, Donavon Frankenreiter and Moon Taxi June 24 (tickets), '90s rappers Cypress Hill July 14 (tickets) and British reggae group Steel Pulse Aug. 5 on their Reggae Against Racism tour (tickets). (Steel Pulse also play Aug. 2 at New England Brewing in Branford; tickets.)
Springfield native Taj Mahal performs with his Phantom Blues Band July 15 at the Academy of Music in Northampton (tickets).
The Iron Horse in Northampton features Boston trio the Wolff Sisters April 18 (tickets), veteran English rocker Graham Parker April 26 (tickets), Dave Alvin & Jimmie Dale Gilmore May 5 (tickets), Boston indie singer Will Dailey June 5 (tickets), a return engagement with Jesca Hoop June 28 (tickets), the inevitable Max Creek Oct. 30-31 (Friday tickets and Saturday tickets) and Eilen Jewell Nov. 18-19 (Wednesday tickets and Thursday tickets).
New York/Nigerian band Takaat perform April 2 at Tourists in North Adams; April 7 with Dust Witch, Sunburned Hand of the Man and Kryssi & Wednesday at the Marigold Theater in Easthampton (tickets); and April 12 at Bradley Street Bicycle Co-op in New Haven.
Infinity Hall in Hartford presents Luis Figueroa June 20 (tickets).
Newtown is pretty far afield, but this is a good one: Jason Isbell performs solo Nov. 7 at Edwards Town Hall in a benefit for Ben’s Lighthouse (tickets).
College Street Music Hall in New Haven hosts Band of Horses and Dinosaur Jr. July 11 (tickets) and Minus the Bear Sept. 15 (tickets).
The Space Ballroom in Hamden presents nu-metal act Hed P.E. April 12 (tickets), Pentagram May 22 (tickets) and Ex-Faces with Saints of Solomon and Deep Within July 15 (tickets).
That’s a wrap on this week. Thank you for reading! If you like what you’ve seen, please share. Previous issues are available in the online archive. 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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