Freak Scene #5: Lisa Bastoni's Spellbinding 'On the Water'
A Guide to Music in Western Mass. (and sometimes Connecticut)
In this week's Freak Scene, Lisa Bastoni offers aching life lessons, Hannah Mohan is back, Harold Walker sets a melancholy love song in a galaxy far, far away and Les Derailleurs share a stage with first-timers Mother Sasha.
Let’s just say what we’re all thinking: New England, and especially Massachusetts, is a stronghold of singer-songwriters who excel at writing top-notch songs that make you swallow hard and wonder why your eyes are damp. (That is what you were thinking, right?) Northampton singer Lisa Bastoni ranks among the best of them.
Bastoni zeroes in on the small details that make up everyday life on her new album, On the Water: dishes piled so high in the sink that you can’t turn on the faucet, singing along off-key with a song on the radio, the upholstery pattern on your best friend’s couch when you were a kid. They’re the images we carry with us, and Bastoni uses them to frame more complicated themes on a dozen new songs. On the Water is steeped in the New England singer-songwriter tradition, on songs built around acoustic guitars and piano, with accents from pedal steel and dusky electric guitars — rootsy, but not quite country (for the most part).
She’s an evocative songwriter who sings with the wisdom of someone who hasn’t always come by her insight the easy way, and the ache in Bastoni’s voice contains as much compassion as it does sorrow. It’s a powerful combination, whether she’s singing about two inexperienced youngsters in way over their heads — “just babies, having a baby” — on “Honeymoon in Disneyland,” or brushing away her own tears on the waltz-time weeper “Only Goodbye” as she explores long-distance yearning with earthy harmony vocals from Mark Erelli.
On the Water isn’t heartrending all the way through: Bastoni lets a droll sense of humor show, too, particularly on “Let’s Look at Houses.” Co-written with Willi Carlisle, the song has a honky-tonk feel with bold steel guitar licks from Rich Hinman and lyrics about holding hands, reprising youthful lust and ogling houses out of your price range. Elsewhere, Bastoni celebrates getting out and never going back on “Hometown” (with harmonies from Kris Delmhorst), and choosing a path based on love, even as doubts creep in, on the muted “Cheap Wine.”
She closes the album with the spellbinding “Out at Sea,” with a first-person narrator singing to a lover who only feels whole out on the water, while she is adrift in loneliness and longing without ever leaving dry land. Muted drums and a spare arrangement of guitars and piano lend the song an overcast feel accentuated by Bastoni’s somber voice (and harmonies from Rose Cousins). It’s a haunting way to wrap up On the Water, and so gorgeous it’s hard to only listen once.
Bastoni performs Saturday, March 16, at 4:15 p.m. in Sanctuary on the third floor of Thorne's Marketplace in Northampton as part of the Back Porch Festival. Ticket information is here. She plays an album-release show April 21 at the Parlor Room in Northampton; ticket are available here.
Hannah Mohan, a Kid No Longer
When last we heard from Northampton native Hannah Mohan, her band And the Kids were touring behind their 2019 album When This Life Is Over (which I reviewed for Paste). The title proved prophetic in a way: The pandemic hit and the band broke up and for Mohan, that life was over. She channeled a whole lot of feelings about it in new directions, one of which was the solo song "Time Is a Walnut," which Egghunt Records released last month. It's a showcase for her prismatic voice and distinctive lyrical sensibility, and a welcome return from a creative force.
Harold Walker's 'Bad Motivator' Works Too Well
There's not a ton of overlap between the Star Wars franchise and melancholy love songs, but Harold Walker shades the Venn diagram a touch with his song "Bad Motivator." The Middletown singer and songwriter takes Luke Skywalker's departure from Tatooine as the starting point a song Walker sings from the perspective of someone who misses him, accompanied by spacey swiggles of sound. "I was just wondering what happened to the poor bastards who were waiting for him at the Tosche Station," Walker says. (Full disclosure: I went to high school with Harold, and we've been friends for years. He's never not been into Star Wars.)
Les Derailleurs, Mother Sasha Play Meat for Tea Bash
Les Derailleurs bring the "post-punk party" back to the stage this Saturday, March 9, at Abandoned Building Brewery in Easthampton. Sharing the bill in their first-ever live performance is Mother Sasha, featuring Jeff Lloyd of Easthampton's Urojets, Jenna Lloyd (sometimes of the Urojets) and Sasha Statman-Weil. The gig is part of La Cirque Des Meres a Velo, a.k.a. the launch party for the latest issue of Meat for Tea, the Valley-based literary magazine. Admission is $10, doors open at 7 p.m.
Next week: Red Herrings hold it down in Holyoke on their album Zax Armoire.
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.