Amid the staggering load of old-fashioned media that still lurks in my basement, queued up for transfer to digital, are some DIY cassettes from the Valley music scene of the 1990s. Most of them are the handiwork of longtime singer/songwriter Philip Price, who put out a fair few titles back then with his band The Maggies and solo as “Feet Wet.” Before that, he played in Memorial Garage.
Material from all those efforts is catalogued and sometimes available as MP3s at Price’s website (www.philipprice.com). It’s a lot of fun to poke into the far corners of that site—its sprawling song lists and reproductions of old cassette covers are a sort of virtual stroll through part of the Valley scene of a decade-plus ago.
Nowadays, if Price’s name sounds familiar, it’s probably because of his role as the chief singer and songwriter of the band Winterpills. That band is, this week, releasing its fifth album, All My Lovely Goners. I quickly found myself engrossed in listening to it, impressed by the multi-layered depth of its best tracks and by the unexpected juxtaposition of the band’s harmonized dreamscapes and pleasantly overdriven guitar leads.
The album feels like Winterpills’ fullest realization of some of the central ideas that have driven Price’s songwriting in this musical context; it’s often low-key, but remains hypnotic, and its moments of higher-decibel intensity arrive with a natural ease that steers clear of rock cliché.
All the more interesting, then, to return to some of Price’s earliest efforts on the heels of listening to All My Lovely Goners. If you don’t have a stack of old cassettes in the basement, that’s still easily accomplished at Price’s website. Take “Heart Egg” (from the Feet Wet cassette Harpies), available as an MP3. That track features a faster tempo and much more prominent hard-edged guitar than is common in the music of Winterpills. The vibe is along the lines of ’60s psychedelia funneled through the fuzz-drenched kind of six-string playing that was au courant in the early ’90s. There is, all the same, a remarkable consistency in the strong, top-of-the-range vocal style and the layers of harmony. It’s clearly a trope he’s worked with for a couple of decades, one he now employs with a practiced grace, twining his voice with Winterpills’ Flora Reed to powerful effect.
Price’s deep catalogue of his many recordings over the long haul provides an intriguing map, a bared-soul look at the evolution in songwriting of a local whose efforts reveal consistency of concerns, not to mention an impressively large list of songs. The long-term results of his dedication to the craft of taking songs from conception to realization can be readily heard in All My Lovely Goners.
The weekend of Feb. 24-25 offers lots of wintry celebration for the album, starting with a Feb. 24 art opening for an exhibition of work by Price and Lillianna Pereira, who collaborated on the album artwork. The next night features a CD release party at the Iron Horse followed by an afterparty at the Sierra Grille which also marks the debut of a new People’s Pint brew, Winterpillsner.
Lillianna Pereira and Philip Price exhibition All My Lovely Goners: Feb. 24-March 24; reception: Feb. 24, 6-9 p.m., Pinch Gallery, 179 Main St., Northampton, www.pinchgallery.com.
CD Release Party with Winterpills, Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion: Feb. 25, 7 p.m., $10/advance, $13/door, Iron Horse, 20 Center St., Northampton, (413)586-8686, www.iheg.com.
