Freak Scene #53: Outro Ponder Migration on 'Broken Promise' EP
Plus, a new LP from the Will Call, and a modest suggestion for Fountains of Wayne
A Guide to Music in Western Mass. (and sometimes Connecticut)
This week in Freak Scene, we catch up with Outro as the Northampton foursome releases the new EP Broken Promise, and we hear from Greenfield band the Will Call, which just released the LP Amnesia. Also, we have a modest suggestion for Fountains of Wayne, who are reconstituting for (at least) two shows this summer.
Northampton musician Josh Levy has been playing in bands since he was a teenager in the 1990s, but the Outro singer and guitarist is a late-blooming songwriter. His first serious effort at writing songs yielded tracks that ended up on Outro’s debut LP, 2023’s The Current.
“I think that’s where I started feeling like I had a voice as a songwriter, and that’s been a really amazing discovery,” says Levy, who in high school played in a punk group with Eugene Hutz, now of Gogol Bordello.
Once Levy started to find his voice as a songwriter on The Current, an album I described as “full of right angles and rough edges,” he pursued a more specific theme on the follow-up: the five songs on Outro’s bold, propulsive new EP Broken Promise are “loosely connected” to the idea of migration.
Broken Promise | Outro
5 track album
“I was thinking about the lives of people who have been forced to move from one place to another, and what life would be like in between,” Levy says. “You know, in those spaces where you have lost everything and you haven’t found something new, you’re still living a life. It’s inspired by world events, of course, but also by, like, what did my family go through when they were forced to leave the places that they lived in?”
Though Levy addresses those ideas in his lyrics, sometimes in an abstract way, he wanted the musical arrangements to fit the theme, too. His Outro bandmates Adam Zucker on guitar and harmony vocals, Peter Sax on bass and Noam Schatz on drums helped lock in the sound that Levy had in mind.
“This record does a really nice job of showing what the band does as a unit,” Levy says.
Lead single “Gila,” released last fall (and included in Freak Scene #31) is tightly wound and deceptively bright. Elsewhere, on opener “Fool,” Outro lay a thick blanket of prickly guitars over a lithe bassline and a rock-solid beat, while “New Home” is built around reverberating guitars and dry, crisp drums. (Outro made Broken Promise at Sonelab in Easthampton with Justin Pizzoferrato, who recorded the drums the same way the famed indie-rock engineer Steve Albini did when he worked with acts like Nirvana and PJ Harvey at his Electrical Audio studio in Chicago in the ’90s.)
“I feel like the music is of a piece with the lyrics of these songs,” Levy says. “The urgency of the music, or the heaviness of the music, communicates the stories that I’m trying to tell.”
Outro came together in the fall of 2021, though members of the group have played together in various configurations for much longer: Sax and Schatz were two-thirds of the early-aughts trio Mobius Band, and both played with Levy in Sax’s band the Capitulators in the 2010s. Levy met Zucker soon after moving to Northampton in 2009, and the pair would jam together on covers for fun before Levy formed Outro and asked Zucker to join.
The band was gelling at the same that Levy was testing his chops as a songwriter, and both have continued apace since then. Levy has kept busy enough writing songs that Outro may already have enough material for another EP, reflecting his tendency to move fast when he’s focused — yet not so fast that he’s lost sight of what Outro have done so far.
“Sometimes I take a step back and I’m like, ‘Look at this band we put together,’” Levy says. “For the kinds of aspirations that we have as middle-aged dudes in Northampton, we’ve put together a pretty solid thing here.”
The Will Call Offer ‘Bowling-Alley-Mountain-Rock’ on New LP
Ask Andrew Rush what his band the Will Call sounds like and he has a description in mind: “I call it bowling-alley-mountain-rock,” he says by email. “Whatever that means.”
As you might expect, Rush has a sense of what it means: “Having fun and playing loose, grungy post-punk rock ’n’ roll, I guess.”
That’s what the Will Call are doing on Amnesia, the Greenfield trio’s fourth album. Recorded at 1357 Recording Studio with Monte Arnstam on drums and Marc Seedorf on bass and keys, Rush says the new LP is his most personal collection of songs so far. The singer and guitarist paired lyrical themes drawn from his own life with sludgy guitars and a churning mix of bass and drums on much of Amnesia.
They form an imposing sonic wall on opener “Green Mountain Woman” and, later, on “Walk the World,” where the fuzzed-over guitars seem to throw off sparks. The Will Call pare down the sound on “It’s Not Enough,” where Arnstam’s spare drum beat holds the song together as Rush and Seedorf add foreboding parts on guitar and bass, respectively. As the song builds, a brooding keyboard part seeps in like rising floodwaters while Rush contemplates a culture where the forces of division and isolation seem ascendent. Earlier on the album, “The Scrawl” is less dire: the tune features the catchiest melody on the album, with call-and-response vocals on the chorus and a thick bed of growling guitars. Throughout Amnesia, the trio sounds as if they’re enjoying the process, without the musicians taking themselves too seriously.
“The main point is to embrace creativity and try to have some insight, intelligence and positive energy in what can be an exhausting and challenging world,” Rush says.
Fountains of Wayne Return With Summer Festival Dates
In unexpected music news this week, Northampton’s Chris Collingwood is reconvening with his Fountains of Wayne bandmates Jody Porter and Brian Young to perform July 4 at Summerfest in Milwaukee and Sept. 26 at Ocean’s Calling in Maryland. Eve 6 bassist Max Collins will step in for bassist Adam Schlesinger, who died of complications from Covid-19 in April 2020, during that terrifying first wave of the pandemic.
Let’s just say up front that there’s no replacing Schlesinger, who was a unique talent (and there’s no indication that this new incarnation of Fountains of Wayne is trying to). Also, there’s no way they’re going to all this trouble for two live dates nearly three months apart. There will surely be more. So if that’s the case, wouldn’t it be great to see Fountains of Wayne at the Green River Festival in June? Or maybe doing a warm-up show at the Iron Horse? They played there a couple times back in the day: an acoustic-ish show in 2009 and an amped-up performance in 2012 were both a lot of fun. Let’s go, DSP Shows: make this happen.
Upcoming Concerts
Tree House Brewing in South Deerfield hosts the Gin Blossoms July 5 (tickets). Local residents concerned about noise from outdoor concerts there will love these next two shows: Dinosaur Jr. and Snail Mail are there July 15 (tickets), while the Drive-By Truckers and Deer Tick co-headline July 30 (tickets). The Drive-By Truckers and Deer Tick also play College Street Music Hall in New Haven July 29 (tickets).
In addition, College Street Music Hall hosts Simple Plan June 3 (tickets).
The Academy of Music in Northampton features Mary Chapin Carpenter with Brandy Clark Aug. 10 (tickets), and DakhaBrakha Nov. 22 (tickets).
The Iron Horse in Northampton brings Fatboi Sharif, K-The-I??? and Wave Generators April 4 (tickets), Spouse with Spottiswoode and His Enemies April 20 (tickets), the Bones of JR Jones June 14 (tickets), Albert Cummings June 21 (tickets), Amanda Anne Platt & the Honeycutters June 26 (tickets), Irish indie-rockers I Draw Slow June 29 (tickets) and Jon Pousette-Dart in acoustic-duo form July 18 (tickets).
The Space Ballroom in Hamden, Conn., hosts Phoneboy June 6 (tickets), LA LOM June 17 (tickets) and, on Oct. 26, the excellent Ezra Furman, who has a new album out in May (tickets).
StageOne at FTC in Fairfield brings the Pete Francis Band April 12 (tickets), the Sweet Remains April 30 (tickets), New York rocker Willie Nile Sept. 26 (tickets) and former October Project singer Mary Fahl Nov. 14 (tickets).
Also, the Back Porch Festival has posted the daily schedule, which affords two opportunities to see Kimaya Diggs, Old Hat String Band and also Fantastic Cat. The latter band in April will release a deluxe edition of their first-rate 2024 album, called Now That’s What I Call Now That’s What I Call Fantastic Cat.
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