Basemental
by Will Meyer | Sep 10, 2019 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Featured
Editor’s note: This is Will Meyer’s last column as the author of Basemental. A music critic is something I’d never thought I’d be. I hardly knew anything about music, I certainly was no authority. I was a little surprised when former Adovcate editors...
by Will Meyer | Aug 27, 2019 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Featured
Brattleboro singer-songwriter Ruth Garbus strikes a deep place in the human psyche. Her strange earworm melodies and narrative lyrics have a way of lodging deep. This is especially true for Garbus’s new album, Kleinmeister — German for “small master,” which is set to...
by Will Meyer | Aug 15, 2019 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Featured
Jesus Vio’s new album Dutch Science kicks off with the mother of all questions: “Do You Believe?”: The vamping, minimalist, proto-acoustic track wryly asks “Do you believe in Halloween?” before declaring that “P.U.M.K.S. is not dead,” introducing the irreverently...
by Will Meyer | Jul 25, 2019 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music
When The New York Times profiled Kurt Vile in the fall, they titled their piece “Kurt Vile, Indie Rock’s Charming Riddle.” The implication, of course, was that the long-haired indie rocker had a Rubik’s Cube to decode, something to latch onto underneath the...
by Will Meyer | Jul 2, 2019 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music
Deerhoof has been making topsy-turvy, explosive rock music for over 25 years. Founded in the ‘90s, the group is still at it. They have released 15 albums, collaborated with countless musicians, and have inspired many more (myself included). The band will play Hawks...
by Will Meyer | Jun 18, 2019 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music
Joey La Neve DeFrancesco, guitarist for acclaimed punk band Downtown Boys, also performs as La Neve. While La Neve is a project that certainly shares the political concerns of Downtown Boys, it is stylistically different all together. Drawing on house, industrial, and...
by Will Meyer | Jun 4, 2019 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music
Imagine it’s the year 2020 and you get invited by a friend to a local house show. The catch: you don’t know who the performers will be and you don’t know where it will be located until the day of the show. You must apply in advance to even purchase a ticket and then...
by Will Meyer | May 24, 2019 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music
As the weather warms up and the sun comes out, musicians flock to Main Street, opening their cases to busk. I have lived many downtown Northampton lives — as a busker, in food service, as a journalist for The Shoestring reporting on Northampton politics, to name a...
by Will Meyer | May 10, 2019 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music
Before prisons became the inevitable institutions they are today, believe it or not, they were introduced as a reform; a humane alternative to torture or death. In 1790, English common law condemned those guilty of “petty treason” to the punishment of being burned...
by Will Meyer | Apr 25, 2019 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music
Recently, on a Saturday morning, I was lying in bed trying to muster the will to get up when a man dressed in all black, who seemed vaguely familiar, started poking around — letting himself into my room unannounced — and generally scoping out my personal dwelling...
by Will Meyer | Apr 12, 2019 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music
The Flywheel celebrates its 20th birthday this month. In 1999, the Flywheel launched in a former cabinet shop in Easthampton — hosting shows and rousing rabble. The thought that the all-volunteer collective show space would enter a second decade, let alone a third,...
by Will Meyer | Mar 29, 2019 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music
One of the more difficult things about making music is the shape and form of the modern music industry. There are so many reasons why talented bands might develop a loyal and dedicated niche audience and never break through to larger success. At this point in time it...
by Will Meyer | Mar 1, 2019 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music, Uncategorized
Free Pizza was a punk band founded in 2009 and based in Boston. If the name isn’t too much of a giveaway, the ethos of the band was playful and goofy. The heavy-hitting upbeat rowdiness was accessible, earnest, and always a good time. In 2016, Free Pizza threw in the...
by Will Meyer | Feb 8, 2019 | Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music
Hadley’s Mike Parham, whose solo moniker is Mibble, recently released a new album, “Welcome the Earth Dog.” Parham’s superb home recordings sound like miniature musical collages, complete with sound effects, samples, and a lackadaisical posture towards the...
by Will Meyer | Jan 10, 2019 | Basemental, Columns, Featured
Earlier this month, the inconceivable happened. I got word that my friends were playing a punk show in the Hampshire Mall, in the sports bar arm of “PINZ”— a combination boutique bowling alley, arcade, and faux-industrial looking bar decorated with enough flat-screen...
by Will Meyer | Dec 14, 2018 | Basemental, Columns, Featured
November brought with it not one, not two, but three Mal Devisa releases. First, on November 9th, came a full-length titled Shade and the Little Creature and a complementary EP called Mystery Tsrain, presumably named for the Amherst record shop. And a few days later,...
by Will Meyer | Nov 8, 2018 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Music
There are two reasons I like music. The first is that euphoric feeling you get when you see an amazing band (especially for the first time); the second is I like musicians and their stories. I enjoy compulsively consuming them. Gotta scrape the bottom of the Wikipedia...
by Will Meyer | Oct 26, 2018 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Music
Self described “weak hardcore” band Landowner leaves few stones unturned in skewering today’s tattered state of affairs on their August album Blatant. Everything from consumerism and television to insecure men and elite self-congratulation gets a scathing treatment by...
by Will Meyer | Sep 17, 2018 | Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music
Two years ago when I wrote a profile about Finley Janes’ project Pussyvision, the project was just getting started. A year prior, Janes wasn’t making music—yet. Pussyvision had yet to go on multiple tours, one of which took Janes as far as Mexico, and produce, record...
by Will Meyer | Aug 31, 2018 | Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music
Western Massachusetts is known for its rich lineage of foundational bands that have defined underground music from different eras. Of course Dinosaur Jr. comes to mind, not to mention Pixies. While the shadow of bands like that certainly looms large (“omg, Murph just...
by Will Meyer | Jul 26, 2018 | Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music, Newsletter
The experimental guitar duo Body / Head — Kim Gordon and Bill Nace — released their second studio album, The Switch, earlier this month on Matador. The band’s 2013 debut, Coming Apart, skewed closer to traditional songs, at least in the abstract sense. Gordon, who, of...
by Will Meyer | Jun 15, 2018 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music, Newsletter
Wendy Eisenberg has made a name for herself in the amalgamated DIY, jazz, and improvisation scenes in New England and beyond. Coming via Rochester and then Boston, Eisenberg now lives in Amherst. Eisenberg has a variety of tactics in her artist’s toolbox. Among them...
by Will Meyer | May 23, 2018 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Newsletter
Local legend Thurston Moore — Sonic Youth, Chelsea Light Moving, one off noise sets all over the Valley — had a cameo in an adult talk show called Space Ghost Coast to Coast. Moore played a character called Fred Cracklin in a 1996 episode of the Cartoon Network show...
by Will Meyer | Apr 26, 2018 | Articles, Arts, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music, Newsletter
Tucked away in an old house in Hadley live two musicians named Sal and Cooper, who collectively make up the rock duo The Taxidermists. The band has nurtured something of a cult following from DIY persistence and their 2015 record Honesty Box. One showgoer recently...
by Will Meyer | Apr 4, 2018 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Music, Newsletter
What happens after the gig is over, the room is reset, and everyone goes home? This is the prompt being posed by a new collective that is organizing a festival later this month by the name, well, After the Gig Fest. “We wanted to use the phrase ‘After The Gig’ in...
by Will Meyer | Mar 13, 2018 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Music, Newsletter, Review, Review
Before writing this column, I stopped by Tundrastomper’s band house near the border of Easthampton and Southampton. Bassist Andrew Jones was getting surgical with a vacuum in the suburban home’s awkwardly large bathroom. He then offered me a bowl of black beans, which...
by Will Meyer | Feb 12, 2018 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Newsletter
On January 20th, 2017, I attended (and also played) an anti-inauguration “bash” at the Flywheel in Eastampton. Everyone was reeling and processing — the whole day was harrowing and bleak. That night, for the first time, I heard Diana Davies (who goes by Moggie to...
by Will Meyer | Jan 30, 2018 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Newsletter
Elliot Hartmann-Russell, a local musician who has quite a big appetite for releasing lots of albums under different aliases and bands—including Sweat Enzo, Thee Arcadians, and Full Grown Cats—and Caleb Rosazza, who plays guitar in Lux Deluxe, have teamed up for a...
by Will Meyer | Jan 16, 2018 | Articles, Basemental, Columns
The fight to prevent additional police operated surveillance cameras in downtown Northampton has dragged on since September — over four months, two calendar years, and even through a municipal election. The Northampton City Council has voted 7-2 passing first a...
by Will Meyer | Jan 2, 2018 | Articles, Basemental, Columns
Listening to Northampton-based Izy Coffey’s new EP, Love Sung, feels like a warm sweater — one you were wearing when you were broken and then put back together again, and its thread the commonality between your disparate emotions. It’s calm, tender, and has a graceful...
by Will Meyer | Dec 18, 2017 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Newsletter
I am the Grinch. People who know me know this — my mom better than anyone. I scoff at Christmas songs and “holiday cheer,” wanting nothing to do with a holiday that is closely aligned with capitalism, patriarchy, and bad parties. But nothing warms my Grinch heart like...
by Will Meyer | Dec 4, 2017 | Articles, Basemental, Columns
The joke about Eastampton shoegazers Kindling is that if they play a house show, some uptight neighbor might call the cops. There’s a reason for this: Kindling is very loud. Too loud for poorly insulated residential basements. When they play gigs, their three...
by Will Meyer | Nov 20, 2017 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Music
Last week my colleague Jennifer Levesque reported on musician and rock documentarian Tanya Pearson’s efforts to challenge Wikipedia edits. While trying to revise entries on the free encyclopedia, Pearson discovered that many edits and entries weren’t getting...
by Will Meyer | Nov 6, 2017 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Music, Newsletter, Review
When I heard there was a local band called Landowner, I thought: “Surely, they’re joking. This is satirical, right?” But punk is weird these days — everyone is on Facebook hoping companies will sponsor them — so I wasn’t completely sure. I started asking friends,...
by Will Meyer | Oct 23, 2017 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Music
The Young Tricksters have returned. After what felt like forever, the Amherst quartet have broken their quiet to give the people what they want: a full-length album. After releasing a couple self-recorded demos back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth (March 2013 to...
by Will Meyer | Oct 9, 2017 | Articles, Basemental, Columns
Stretched between Brattleboro and Northampton, a new band, Smartyr, has come on the scene. I kept running into Chad, the main singer, at shows starting last summer. He had left behind his New Haven, CT-based band, The Chore Boys, and moved to Northampton. Every time I...
by Will Meyer | Sep 25, 2017 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Newsletter
Last Monday, I reluctantly went to a house show in Hadley. I was going ’cause my friends were going — probably, but I was also vaguely interested in seeing some band from Minnesota that was supposed to be good. Honestly, I had radically low expectations. I saw the...
by Will Meyer | Sep 11, 2017 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Newsletter
I used to think touring was excessive, stupid, and generally felt existentially conflicted about it. Why should I leave the house and use fossil fuels to do anything that’s trivial? Why should we impose our music on these seemingly nice people when there’s so much...
by Will Meyer | Aug 28, 2017 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Music, Newsletter
I kept hearing that Ian (Thee Arcadians) and Androo (ex-Spirit Ghost, Nancy Drool) would disappear into different basements and jam on one chord for hours at a time. The roommates tolerated it (within reason), the neighbors were never “chill” to begin with. But that...
by Advocate Staff | Aug 14, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Basemental, Columns, Music, Newsletter
I first caught Nanny at the 13th Floor in Northampton this past March; one of my bands was sharing a bill with them. Earlier this summer, I saw them again and had that feeling I was starting to grasp the songs. It wasn’t long before I learned a debut EP was right...
by Will Meyer | Aug 11, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Basemental, Columns, Music, Newsletter, Review
I first caught Nanny at the 13th Floor in Northampton this past March; one of my bands was sharing a bill with them. Earlier this summer, I saw them again and had that feeling I was starting to grasp the songs. It wasn’t long before I learned a debut EP was right...
by Will Meyer | Jul 17, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Basemental, Columns
I’ve played in about a half dozen bands over the past seven years here in the Valley. I’ve played on the steps of my beloved Goodwin Memorial Library in Hadley (for free) and I’ve played The Calvin (for $250); I’ve played countless basements (including “The...
by Will Meyer | Jul 3, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Basemental, Columns, Music, Newsletter, Review, Review
Tundrastomper, an explosive, chaotic, and notey rock band, formed about 10 years ago when Skyler Lloyd, Sam Brivic, Andrew Jones, and Max Goldstein were teenagers — about 13 years old each. They grew up in a town in Westchester, New York, called Ardsley. I looked it...
by Advocate Staff | Jun 19, 2017 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Music, Newsletter
Some might describe The Leafies You Gave Me as a “band,” but that would be an understatement. At least in the musical sense. Yes, they are musicians. And yes, they make music. But they are a band more like New Oxford American Dictionary’s second definition of the word...
by Will Meyer | Jun 5, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Basemental, Columns, Music, Newsletter
Editor’s note: Jaclyn Walsh uses they/them pronouns. Valley musician, student, and DIY booker Jaclyn Walsh wants you to dump your boyfriend so much that they named their band Dump Him. On the surface such a statement might charm the misandrists and queercore punks...
by Will Meyer | May 22, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Basemental, Columns, Film, Music, Newsletter
Amherst College junior Brian Zayatz’s new documentary, Ask a Punk, opens on a dark basement. You can’t see much other than some hazy Christmas lights in the frame. Some very involved yet calming music — tritones soaked in reverb — plays in the background. This...
by Will Meyer and Nellie Prior | May 8, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Basemental, Columns, News, Newsletter
You may know Amber Wolfe. She fronted the “speakeasy, post-apocalyptic band,” O You Villain, books shows at Amherst Coffee, and is a veteran of the Institute for Musical Arts, where she found “some of the foremothers of local music.” Despite strong roots here in the...
by Will Meyer | Apr 24, 2017 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Newsletter
Editor’s note: Bella Ortia-Wren uses they/their pronouns. Bella Ortia-Wren, who goes by just “Bella” on stage, plays a blue Fender Mustang, a small-bodied guitar with single coil pickups, that sounds shimmery and crisp through a few hot-tempered distortion boxes....
by Will Meyer | Apr 10, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Basemental, Columns, Music
On the road with The Sun Parade From the streets of Nashville I called Lynne Bertrand, who manages the Northampton band The Sun Parade. There was a problem.I had stopped by the venue earlier and noticed the sign outside said they were going first. This wasn’t going to...
by Will Meyer | Mar 27, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Basemental, Columns, Music, Newsletter
How a fictional psychdrone collective from Berlin took form in Greenfield In 2015, a real writer and real College of the Atlantic professor named Daniel Mahoney published a real book called Sunblind Almost Motorcrash. In it, he wrote fictional reviews of imaginary...
by Will Meyer | Mar 13, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music, Newsletter
Pavement certainly planted some type of “slacker” flag in the 90s. Whether or not they were the original “slackers” — they weren’t — is irrelevant, but that label has often evoked that band. Today the same label, certainly a compelling angle for write-ups, is attached...
by Will Meyer | Feb 27, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Basemental, Columns, Music, Newsletter
Pioneer Valley Underground brings new voices to DIY coverage Back in 1999, thousands descended into downtown Seattle for protests against the World Trade Organization, dubbed “The Battle of Seattle.” Not only did protesters successfully get a frank discussion about...
by Will Meyer | Feb 13, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music, Newsletter
December brought with it not one, not two, but three releases from Florence psych punks Thee Arcadians — Ian St. George on guitar, Nico Lapinski on bass, and Elliot Hartmann-Russell on drums. Sure, it sounds like maybe they just put up a mic in band practice, but...
by Will Meyer | Jan 30, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Basemental, Columns, Music, Newsletter
When I started at Hampshire College in 2010, there was this cool band of upperclassmen that kind of blew my mind. They were called Pale Cowboy. They had jazz influences, but it was clear that making irresistible pop music was their thing. One song won me over, which...
by Will Meyer | Jan 16, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Basemental, Columns, Music, Newsletter
Roxy Leblanc has been a mainstay in the Hadley underground for as long as I can remember. She fronted the band Great Smokey, an earnest and groovy psych group that took a few forms between 2009 and 2016, before calling an indefinite hiatus last winter. Since then she...
by Will Meyer | Jan 3, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Basemental, Columns, Music, Newsletter
Staying strong in the face of hate and lost spaces Last week, Basemental interviewed a local musician who lost people close to him in the Ghost Ship warehouse fire on Dec. 2 in Oakland, California. That piece sparked a discussion of safe spaces for artists, which...
by Will Meyer | Dec 27, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Basemental, Columns, Music, Newsletter
One artist’s reflections on the Ghost Ship fire NOTE: On Dec. 2, the Ghost Ship, a 10,000 square-foot arts space inside an Oakland, California, warehouse, caught fire during a performance. Thirty-six people were killed, and more were injured. Steve D’Agostino,...
by Will Meyer | Dec 12, 2016 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Music, Newsletter
On Thursday, Dec. 1, I stood outside the TD Bank in downtown Northampton with about 30 other people to stand with the Sioux Nation and indigenous-led water protectors — not only to stop the pipeline, but to asphyxiate its funding. Local organizers answered an ask from...
by Will Meyer | Nov 28, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music, Newsletter
We must harness the power of DIY to resist Influential music writer Jessica Hopper penned a piece earlier this month on MTV.com that sought to dispel “the silver-lining myth” that a Trump presidency would produce great art, specifically music.She argued that great...
by Will Meyer | Nov 14, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Basemental, Columns, Music, Newsletter
Self-described glamour-grunge witch-punks Deadbeat Club only played their first show earlier this spring. According to an interview in Maximum Rocknroll, they say the band formed “because [they] were sick of playing with boys and trying to start something serious.”...