Freak Scene

Subscribe
Archives
September 26, 2025

Freak Scene #85: The Mammals Touch Grass on New Double Album

Plus, West Hartford native Dan Knishkowy brings his Adeline Hotel project to Northampton

A Guide to Music in Western Mass. (and sometimes Connecticut)

This week in Freak Scene, we hear from Mike Merenda and Ruth Ungar of the Mammals, who perform Saturday at the Parlor Room. Their new double album Touch Grass is either out now or available in November, depending on how you get your music. Also coming to the Parlor Room this weekend is Adeline Hotel, the project of West Hartford native Dan Knishkowy, who has a new album on the way.

Four men and a woman in a patterned dress stand in a line in front of foliage.
The Mammals — from left, Tim Morrison, Ruth Ungar Merenda, Scott Milici, Mike Merenda and Brandon Morrison — got started in Northampton. Photo by Wayne Gibbous.

There’s a difference between merely recording songs and making an album. By the time the Mammals realized they were doing the latter, they had nearly enough music for two LPs. So, the indie-roots band arranged the tracks into the double album Touch Grass, available now to purchase or Nov. 1 on streaming platforms. The first volume leans toward socially conscious tracks, while Vol. 2 has a more personal, introspective feel.

“It became sort of like a daytime and a nighttime album,” says Ruth Ungar, who co-founded the band with Mike Merenda in Northampton in the early 2000s before they relocated to the house in the Hudson Valley where Ungar spent much of her childhood. (The Mammals perform Saturday, Sept. 27, at the Parlor Room; tickets.)

The MammalsThe Doldrums

It was sometime in late 2021 or early ’22 when Merenda and Ungar began doing weekly recording sessions at their Humble Abode Music studio with bassist/engineer Brandon Morrison. The plan when they started was to make demos of the songs that Merenda and Ungar had been writing following the release of the Mammals’ 2020 album Nonet.

“There was just nothing going on, and we wanted to do something to keep some momentum going,” says Merenda, a Northampton native.

The songs they ended up with show the breadth of the Mammals’ aesthetic, with a mix of tracks that are by turns upbeat, dreamy, pointed and mournful. Merenda and Ungar share duties on vocals, guitar and banjo, while she adds ukulele and he contributes keyboards and percussion. Touch Grass also features Morrison on bass, his brother Tim Morrison on drums, Will Bryant on keyboards and Scott Milici on organ, with guest contributions from Charlie Rose on pedal steel, Daniel Littleton on guitar and Courtney Hartman on guitar.

The MammalsLuna Light

“We’re trying to emotionally be true to ourselves and express things that are on our minds without being divisive,” says Merenda, who was also the original drummer in Northampton’s Spouse. “So that’s the needle we’re trying to thread. But I think when you look at the Mammals’ catalog, there is kind of a formula, which is songs I write, songs she writes and then some traditional material.”

Along with Merenda and Ungar’s songs, the album includes the traditional instrumental fiddle number “Washington’s March” and a version of “Going Away” by the folk singer Utah Phillips. Many of the original songs on Touch Grass began taking shape during lockdown. Ungar wrote the somber, aching “Mama Don’t Feel Good” in April 2020 and recorded video of herself playing it to send to a friend wrestling with depression. She and Merenda debuted another new song, the wistful, immensely catchy folk-rocker “The Doldrums,” online when touring wasn’t an option.

“I remember playing ‘The Doldrums’ as a duo on one of the billion livestreams we did,” Merenda says. “I never want to do another livestream.”

Though some of the songs here are topical — “Unpopular Ideas,” for example, finds Merenda skewering corrupt officials, corporate greed and endless war while also advocating for regenerative farms and ditching screens — the group embraces the idea that they’re “a party band with a conscience,” as the Boston Globe once described them.

“You don’t want to exhaust your audience by having it be too heavy,” Merenda says.

Ungar expands on that idea.

“I think a lot of our songs don’t even deliver that much heaviness,” says Ungar, whose father is the acclaimed fiddle player Jay Ungar. “Even a song like ‘Unpopular Ideas,’ someone could just dance along and not really listen to it and be like, ‘Wow, yeah, ideas, cool.’”

That said, the title Touch Grass is definitely pointed. Used generally as a barbed suggestion to Very Online People that they should go outside and connect with something real, the phrase also works as a pun for the Mammals’ music.

“I think touch grass could be what we we’ve been playing all along,” Ungar says, laughing. “We used to joke that the Mammals played all-timey music because it wasn’t all old, so maybe we play touch grass and all-time.”

Support independent media!

Adeline Hotel Comes Home-ish with Parlor Room Show

A man lies on a couch with his head on the midsection of a white dog.
West Hartford native Dan Knishkowy has been recording as Adeline Hotel for a decade. Photo by Amghy Chacon.

It won’t quite be a homecoming when Adeline Hotel performs Sunday at the Parlor Room (tickets), but it’ll be close. The band is the project of Dan Knishkowy, who grew up in West Hartford in a family that has been coming to Western Mass. to see concerts for years. (His sister, Shira, was in high school when she introduced herself at a Wilco show in Look Park in probably 2003, after recognizing me as the Courant’s rock critic. Now she works for the company that manages Alvvays, Waxahatchee and Stephen Malmkus, among other acts.)

Knishkowy has been making music as Adeline Hotel for a decade now, amassing a catalog that includes last year’s introspective divorce album Whodunnit. The follow-up, Watch the Sunflowers, is due Oct. 24. It’s a seven-track collection that swings away from the stark mood of Whodunnit which songs featuring colorful, and often low-key, arrangements. The latest single, “Just Like You,” focuses on Knishkowy’s hushed vocals, which he surrounds with guitar, tendrils of horns and a pared-back rhythm section.

It’s an enigmatic song examining what Knishkowy calls “ingrained patterning,” and he doesn’t feel compelled to clear up any mysteries in the press notes accompanying the single. “The titular line remains elusive still, even to me,” Knishkowy says. “Is it ‘I’m just like you,’ a self-aware acknowledgement of how deep that conditioning goes, or ‘I just like you,’ the rare feeling of connection you find with a person also committed to breaking these cycles?"

Upcoming Concerts

Folk-blues veteran Keb’ Mo’ plays Feb. 28 at the Academy of Music in Northampton (tickets).

Folk duo the Milk Carton Kids plays a pair of shows in the area on their holiday tour. Catch them Dec. 16 at Infinity Music Hall in Hartford (tickets) and Dec. 20 at the Iron Horse in Northampton (tickets).

Cris Williamson, a pioneer of the women’s music movement whose 1975 album The Changer and the Changed is a touchstone, performs Oct. 11-12 at the Institute for the Musical Arts in Goshen (tickets). The IMA also presents the great June Millington this Saturday (tickets), Ches Smith Oct. 4 (tickets), a Joy Conz album-release show Oct. 5 (tickets), Harris Eisenstadt Trio Oct. 10 (tickets) and the comic Karen Williams performing and presenting a workshop Nov. 15 (tickets).

The Iron Horse also hosts Maryland singer-songwriter Michael Nau Jan. 30 with Magic Tuber String Band (tickets), Jackopierce Feb. 5 (tickets) and Stephen Kellogg & the Homecoming Feb. 23 (tickets).

Indie-pop group the Ladybug Transistor plays the Drake in Amherst Dec. 5 with Giant Day and Jeanines (tickets).

College Street Music Hall in New Haven presents Blackberry Smoke Nov 12 with Jason Scott & the High Heat (tickets), comedian Adam Ray Jan. 18 (tickets) and the ’00s pop-punk bands Say Anything and Motion City Soundtrack Feb. 3 (tickets).

Brooklyn post-rockers Channel Vessel play Nov. 13 with the Human Fund, Dirt Pile and Videodome at the Cellar on Treadwell, in the same complex as the Space Ballroom (tickets).

Speaking of the Space Ballroom, Ariel Pink is there Nov. 22 (tickets).

Infinity Hall brings in Max Creek for a pair of shows Nov. 28 in Norfolk and Nov. 29 in Hartford (tickets), which also presents reggae act Mihalidze Dec. 14 (tickets) and Adam Ezra Group Dec. 30 (tickets).

That’s a wrap on this week, but 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.

If you like what you’ve seen here, please share! Freak Scene is free, but donations help make this happen, and are gratefully accepted. Previous issues are available in the online archive.

Don't miss what's next. Subscribe to Freak Scene:
Start the conversation:
Bluesky https://journa.host…
Powered by Buttondown, the easiest way to start and grow your newsletter.