Freak Scene #56: Kris Delmhorst Faces Specters on 'Ghosts in the Garden'
Plus, Taxidermists don't change a thing on their latest, and Perennial have new music!
A Guide to Music in Western Mass. (and sometimes Connecticut)
Oh, what a Freak Scene we have for you this week. Kris Delmhorst sees ghosts on her spellbinding new album, Hadley’s Taxidermists do what they do best on theirs and Perennial have a new EP on the way.
Not every ghost is supernatural: Kris Delmhorst’s latest album is populated by specters and shades, but they are not the spirits of the dearly departed so much as echoes of the past. Ghosts in the Garden is full of them: friends, lovers, circumstances, plans. They’re the ghosts that accumulate over a lifetime, a catalog of could-have-beens that haunt us so much more than anything that goes bump in the night.
For all the power such ghosts exert, Delmhorst wrangles them like a medium in mid-séance on her 10th album. She conjures phantasmic visions of different choices in other lives and lets them wind, serpentine, around our hearts on 11 songs that are haunting in their own right. Apart from the high-octane lockdown-era rocker “Won’t Be Long,” the instrumentation is hushed and understated, which puts the focus on Delmhorst’s lyrics — and her voice, which is rich and full, with a darksome, varnished quality.
She’s weighing the passage of time in the context of the changing seasons on opener “Summer’s Growing Old.” Her voice spirals in layers of harmonies with Rose Cousins over a stately bed of droning electric guitars, and you can practically watch as the shadows lengthen toward an early dusk. “Anyone you’ve ever been is coming back again,” Delmhorst intones, and whether that news seems welcome or unsettling surely depends on who those past selves were.
Later, on “Detour,” Delmhorst offers fleeting, fragmented images of torn earth and empty mountain vistas on a song wondering about the places that shape us before we have the sense, or wherewithal, to go our own way. The music is dusty and dry, with lonesome pedal steel guitar from Rich Hinman, brushed drums from Ray Rizzo and liminal harmony vocals from Jeffrey Foucault, Delmhorst’s husband. There’s a sense of bleak solidarity on “Not the Only One” as Delmhorst sings about someone lost in the daily rituals of their own life, accompanied by herself on electric piano, producer Sam Kassirer on Farfisa and Anna Tivel’s harmony vocals. “Age of Innocence” is more lilting in tone, like a slow dance in the small hours, though Delmhorst’s lyrics are clear-eyed as she dissects the truth that underpins cliches like “don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.”
That sentiment is more relatable than ever in what feels like an age of ghosts. As Delmhorst observes on the title track, they’re in the garden, in the kitchen, in the car, in the bar, in the records, on the highway. On Ghosts in the Garden, she shows us how to face them with compassion.
Kris Delmhorst performs May 9 with Rose Cousins at the Iron Horse in Northampton (tickets).
Taxidermists Do What They Do Best on New LP
For a band with such a simple format, Taxidermists are something of a puzzle. The Hadley duo comprises Cooper B. Handy on guitar and vocals, and Salvadore McNamara on drums. They met through MySpace as pre-teens in 2007, or so the story goes, and they’ve been releasing music together since 2011, when they put out their first EP, Moonburn. Their latest, 20247, is Taxidermists’ first full-length album since TAX in 2019, though “full-length” is a relative term for 12 songs that total just under 28 minutes.
In all that time, on all those recordings, they’ve scarcely changed. That’s not a judgment so much as an observation. There are certainly two-piece bands that have stayed mostly in one lane, like the Boston garage-rockers Mr. Airplane Man, just as there are duos that expanded their sound, such as the White Stripes or the Black Keys. Taxidermists sound pretty much the same as they did as teenagers: their songs are lo-fi, with meandering vocal melodies and lyrics with a first-thought, best-thought sensibility. Tunes often open with a couple of notes on guitar and then the jolt of a chord, which immediately dissolves into noodling when Handy starts to sing, while McNamara holds down a basic, steady beat.
That approach is particularly effective on “does the wind know,” which bops along on a zig-zag guitar riff, or “let the music save them,” which pairs grotty guitar with a plaintive vocal melody that feels more than merely improvised. In other cases, though, you could mix and match songs from 20247 with tracks from the band’s earlier albums without any of them sounding out of place (though Handy has gotten away from the abrupt transitions into effects-pedal guitar distortion that he employed on earlier recordings).
In a way, it’s fascinating, almost as if Taxidermists are determined to preserve their sound as it was when they were essentially just kids. Maybe it’s how Handy and McNamara best collaborate, maybe it’s a form of nostalgia — or maybe it’s both. Either way, the result is a collection of handmade songs that sometimes feel underdeveloped, but never overthought, which gives them a sense of in-the-moment spontaneity that’s impossible to fake.
Taxidermists perform the late show March 21 with Mal Devisa at the Iron Horse in Northampton (tickets).
Perennial Invade Britain on New Single
Just when it seemed like we’d run out of things to say about Perennial (haha jk that could never happen), the Connecticut mod-punk trio is back with “Perennial ’65,” the title track from a new EP due April 4.
With a mix of buzzsaw guitars and vintage-style organ blasts over a barrage of drums, the song picks up where Perennial left off on last year’s album Art History (reviewed in Freak Scene #18). Here’s the description on Bandcamp: “Inspired by the between-album EPs of sixties bands like the Beatles (whose Beatles ’65 compilation inspired the title) and the Who's Ready Steady Who Perennial is even more playful and dynamic on Perennial ’65, fusing British Invasion hooks with their signature art-punk chaos.”
The EP also features a cover of the Kinks’ “All Day and All of the Night, remixes of the Art History tracks “Tiger Technique” by Cody Votolato and “Up-Tight” by Chris Walla, formerly of Death Cab for Cutie, plus another new track, “C Is for Cubism.”
Perennial perform tonight, Friday, March 7, at Tori Town in Holyoke with Radical Joy, Les Dérailleurs and England’s own Teenage Tom Petties. Get in touch on Bluesky or Instagram for the address. Perennial and Teenage Tom Petties are at the Shop in Hamden, Conn., Saturday, March 8. Get in touch on Instagram for the address.
Upcoming Concerts
Beck kicks off an orchestral tour July 15 at the Westville Music Bowl in New Haven, accompanied for this show by an outfit called the Westville Philharmonic (tickets).
Aimee Mann marks the 22 1/2-year anniversary of her album Lost in Space with a tour that stops June 10 at Tree House Brewing in South Deerfield (tickets).
The Pines Theatre in Look Park adds to the summer calender with Iron & Wine and I’m With Her July 21 (tickets) and the Head and the Heart July 26 (tickets).
The Iron Horse hosts sister group Joseph May 4 (tickets); Tune-Yards, fronted by Smith College alumna Merrill Garbus, May 13 (tickets); the songwriting icon Jimmy Webb May 17 (tickets); and Jon Spencer (sans the Blues Explosion, apparently) July 14 (tickets).
Tori Town, a house-concert venue in Holyoke, presents TownFest March 14-16, with Job, Femme Cell, Dalton Moon and 12,000 Fucks on Friday; Bag Lady, Posthumous and Truther on Saturday; and Arms Like Roses, Radical Joy, Velveteen, Diane Young and a secret set on Sunday. Doors open at 7 p.m. each night, and admission is $10. Get in touch on Bluesky or Instagram for the address.
Upcoming shows at the Parlor Room include Lucy Kaplansky April 11 (tickets), Ben Sollee April 25 (tickets), Laura Cantrell May 3 (tickets), Samantha Crain July 20 (tickets) and two performances from French-Algerian guitarist Pierre Bensusan on Nov. 1 (tickets).
Freak Scene is always seeking 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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