Freak Scene #86: Eryie House Ruins Revel in Gothic-Folk on Debut
Plus, Winterpills return with a song from their first new album since 2016
A Guide to Music in Western Mass. (and sometimes Connecticut)
This week in Freak Scene, we check out the new album by Northampton’s Eyrie House Ruins, and Winterpills just released a song from This Is How We Dance, the band’s first album in nine years.
Local hikers and history buffs know the Eyrie House was a hotel at the top of Mount Nonotuck in Holyoke. The place opened in 1861 and operated until April 1901, when the owner tried to cremate a pair of deceased horses in a stable underneath a pavilion on the grounds and burned the whole place to cinders. Eyrie House Ruins, then, is a fitting name for a group that describes itself as a gothic-folk band.
Formed in 2023, the Northampton five-piece has a dramatic sound on its self-titled debut, a collection of eight songs built around banjo, bass, drums, tenor guitar and violin. (The group plays an album-release show Saturday at Progression Brewery in Northampton.) Their instrumentation gives Eyrie House Ruins an anachronistic feeling, as if the band exists outside of linear time in an epoch of its own making as the musicians mix rock and country with folk and Eastern European music, as singer/tenor guitarist Rikk Desgres told the Springfield Republican in July. Those influences are evident on opener “Hate in the Name of gOD,” which sways through a woozy, waltz-time arrangement that feels like something you’d find at the dark end of Tin Pan Alley, while an ominous, glowering bassline from Jim Pion forms a bed for tendrils of violin from Kelsey Peake and eerie banjo by Val Brown on “The Rope Swings.” (Jay Barnes on drums rounds out the lineup.)
The gothic part comes largely from the band’s subject matter. Eyrie House Ruins have a burlesque sensibility (in the broadest meaning of the term, not in the striptease sense) that manifests in songs that come across as jaunty, carnivalesque murder ballads. In addition to the “The Rope Swings,” there’s the evocative “Cyanide Bride,” a punkabilly-laced number called “Waiting Around to Die” and the vivid “Killed by Death,” where clucking banjo lunks along over urgent strummed guitar while Desgres’ narrator likens himself to a reptile and a lone wolf.
The band takes a colorful approach to its first album in a way that seems in sync with the vibe of a place that burned down for the most farcically macabre of reasons. Though only ruins remain of the Eyrie House, Eyrie House Ruins are making music that’s very much alive.
Winterpills ‘Lean In’ on First Song from New Album
Reflecting on that first year of COVID is grim, frankly — the anxiety, isolation and uncertainty left a mark that has been slow to fade. Winterpills sidestep the worst parts of that early lockdown period on “Lean in the Wind,” a new song that captures a sense of longing for community, without letting go of the hope that communal gatherings would return.
Flora Reed takes lead vocals on the track, with aching harmonies on the chorus from Philip B. Price. Their voices are surrounded by a wistful folk-pop arrangement of piano, guitars, bass and drums. “Philip wrote the first line of this song years ago but never finished it,” Reed says in a press release. “I picked it back up and it became a sort of reverie, remembering the worst days of COVID when you pined for your friends and family.”
Speaking of: My family and I were living in Madrid when the pandemic struck, and we spent the initial lockdown in a small apartment with two little kids (I wrote a little about it here). As restrictions eased slightly in Spain, we returned to Northampton in early May. We had only been back a few days when we took the kids to Childs Park, where we ran into Philip and Flora and their son. Though it was pure chance, the encounter felt like a welcome home, even as we stayed 20 feet apart while chatting.
Guitarist Dennis Crommett put together the lyric video for the track, which comes from This Is How We Dance, Winterpills’ first new album since Love Songs in 2016. It was clear that new music was on the way: the Iron Horse in Northampton has for weeks listed a Winterpills album-release show on Nov. 8 (tickets). This Is How We Dance comes out the following Friday, Nov. 14.
Upcoming Concerts
Porchfest returns to Easthampton this Saturday, Oct. 4, with 48 performers in 22 locations around town. The festivities start at noon and culminate in a headline set by the eclectic hard-rockers Princess Ghoul at 5 p.m. at 56 Parson St. The full lineup and schedule are here.
The Florence Community Band performs this Sunday. Oct. 5, at 2 p.m. in the bandshell at Look Park in Northampton. The show is free, though there’s an admission fee for cars entering the park.
The Iron Horse hosts Americana band Well Suited Nov. 6 with the Diamondstones (tickets), Colombian singer Nidia Gongora Jan. 8 (tickets), Celtic rockers Young Dubliners Feb. 12 (tickets), shoegaze band Twen Feb. 15 (tickets) and Steve Forbert March 8 (tickets).
Jam band Neighbor performs Feb. 13 at the Drake in Amherst (tickets).
Fantastic Shows presents its third-annual Halloween Covers Show Oct. 30 at the Marigold Theater in Easthampton, featuring Dicey Riley performing as the Pogues, Recent History playing play Weezer's entire Blue Album and Rage Is Relentless performing as Rage Against the Machine (tickets). The Marigold also hosts Peter Mulvey and Bring it to Bear Nov. 16 (tickets).
The Space Ballroom in Hamden hosts the Ladybug Transitor Dec. 10 (tickets), Bishop Allen with Mates of State Jan. 15 (tickets), Twen Jan. 17 (tickets) and Saxsquatch — a 7-foot-tall saxophonist and electronic music artist in a Bigfoot suit — for not one but two shows March 7-8 (tickets for the first and second).
On that note, we’ll wrap it up for this week. 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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