THE ARTS PAPER – ARTICLES

Moving mountains to make music — and art

Hank Hoffman

Dan Greene, songwriter, performer, poet and visual artist.

Art is a three-headed beast for Dan Greene. One of New Haven’s premier songwriters and performers, Greene is best known for his work with the rock bands The Butterflies of Love and The Mountain Movers. It is, he says, the “public head” of the three-headed beast. The Mountain Movers released their second album, “Let’s Open Up the Chest,” in October (on limited edition vinyl, no less). The Butterflies of Love—in which Greene shares songwriting/singing/guitarist responsibilities with longtime friend Jeffrey Greene (no relation)—have recorded three CDs (four, if you include the homemade “America’s Newest Hit Makers” from 1996) and several singles, toured England and Ireland and performed on live BBC broadcasts.

But Greene is also a writer of fiction and poetry and a prolific visual artist. While his writing (for the most part) is still unpublished, his paintings and drawings have adorned Mountain Movers’ flyers and album covers.

A graduate of Yale Divinity School, Greene currently teaches secular subjects to elementary students at an Orthodox Jewish school in New Haven. While in college—where he met future fellow Butterfly of Love Jeffrey Greene—he took courses in poetry and literature. But Greene is a self-taught musician and visual artist.

“Most things I do are untaught—my art and songs and even the way I play guitar. It’s just me forcing the issue, not worrying what people will think,” Greene tells me in an interview at his post-colonial Hamden home. Greene and his wife Diane share the house with their English bulldog, a large cat and more than a dozen prize-winning tortoises. Built in 1790, the house is filled with Greene’s colorful pastel and watercolor drawings and paintings, in a style nestled somewhere between folk art naiveté and medieval illuminated manuscripts. The paintings are populated with monks and saints, peasants, strange birds and dragons.

“With things like drawing and writing, I need that old cliché: to be alone and to be in a separate space and a space that’s particular to what I’m doing,” Greene says. There is a little room in the front of the house with a desk and a manual typewriter that is the “poetry room.” It is there that Greene keeps three-ring notebooks and folders of his plays, poetry, children’s stories and fiction. The larger, adjoining room is where Greene revises his writing on a laptop. Song demos are recorded in the basement. Additional workspace is available in a backyard shed.

Music got in his blood at an early age. With six older siblings listening to music in their teens “when I was still a kid,” he “got ahead of the curve stylistically. My oldest brother had a band in high school. They’d set up in the living room,” recalls Greene. “It was good to be around live music so close and so often.”

He taught himself guitar in high school, with little confidence in his skills. He didn’t consider writing songs until meeting Jeffrey Greene at Hamilton College in New York. The two Greenes both volunteered for the college radio station and shared an enthusiasm for 1980’s favorites: the Feelies, Husker Du and Sonic Youth. Dan Greene taught Jeffrey the rudiments of guitar, showing him the chords for some Feelies songs. Jeffrey, in turn, began writing songs and encouraged Dan to follow suit.

His initial forays into songwriting weren’t promising, Greene says. It took him quite a while to figure out the difference between writing poetry and song lyrics. Song lyrics, he eventually realized, needed to go for the listener’s jugular. He needed to pick language that was more direct, “thinking about communication and entertainment and less about trying to obscure.” Poetic language he found could be “more fantastical.”

Greene is nothing if not prolific. He has written hundreds of songs. He regularly challenges himself by picking a theme—a word, a concept—and writing and recording nearly an album’s worth of songs connected to that theme in only a couple of days. He shared with me a few of these demo “albums.” On “The Real Record,” every song has the word “real” in the title. One song, “Real Evil,” made the cut and is included on the new Mountain Movers record. Another demo collection, “Big Battle,” features a dozen songs with ideas and titles inspired by drawings from his student Yitzhcak Nemoy. “Let’s Open Up the Chest,” the title cut on the new record, was culled from “Big Battle.” With every block of 10–12 songs, “there might be one good song or there might be four good songs, but one I record in the future,” says Greene.

When it comes time to record a “published record,” Greene picks and chooses from his backlog of songs. He counts on the critiques of fellow band members to filter out the weaker material. “When you write a bunch,” Greene says, “you can begin to lose perspective on what’s good and what’s bad.”

The Butterflies of Love metamorphosed out of the chrysalis of Bug, an acoustic duo the two Greenes formed in the early 1990’s, shortly after they moved to New Haven. Presently a sextet, the group broke through in 1999 with the CD “How to Know The Butterflies of Love.” The highly lauded disc showcased their brooding psychedelic pop, rooted in the sound of 1960’s garage bands channeled through the self-conscious milieu of indie rock. The critical success of that record paved the way for tours of England and a slot on the BBC show of the legendary (and now late) DJ John Peel.

“Going to do the Peel session, it was amazing to be in the building. You walk down the corridors, and there are huge orchestras doing film scores on either side of you, in these massive rooms, with people you know singing in front of them,” recalls Greene. “Then you move into the other room and it’s the Beatles, Hendrix, Bowie, Elvis Costello, all these people played in the same room. And probably with the same guys at the controls.”

With the members of The Butterflies of Love now scattered among several eastern states, the group only convenes to record and rehearse for tours, most recently a September 2007 circuit through the U.K. Feeling the need for a more regular outlet for his musical energies, Greene formed The Mountain Movers, with bass player Rick Omonte. The vintage rock sound characteristic of The Butterflies’ records—guitars, bass, drums, electric organ or piano—is augmented on the two Mountain Movers recordings with soulful horns and the occasional cello and violin. The Butterflies of Love specialize in songs of grimly failed romance (and, as Greene adds with a chuckle, “drinking and terrorism”) Greene’s Mountain Movers tunes tend to revolve around themes that also animate much of his writing and visual art: death, metaphysics and religious tropes.

“I use a lot of imagery—usually, Catholic imagery—from my upbringing,” Greene says. The Devil himself is a featured character in four songs on the first Mountain Movers CD, “We’ve Walked in Hell” and “There is Life After Death.”

“I met the devil on the bus/stuck in the breakdown lane/he came and sat next to me/and called me by name/he said, ‘I’ve come for you, Dan’/I said, ‘You’ve got the wrong man,’” Greene sings in “I Met the Devil on the Bus” from “We’ve Walked in Hell.”

“I do think of it as ‘underground music.’ We definitely use old-fashioned amps and gear and song structures, and that puts you in a certain area on the music map,” Greene says. “I wouldn’t call it ‘art rock’ but there should be moments at every rock show that get a little out of control.”

The Hospital Project

Lucile Bruce

	Students at ACES ECA rehearse a scene for The Hospital Project.

The students recorded their fears, anonymously, on 3 x 5 index cards:

How will I be able to handle the sickness and sadness of a hospital?

I’m afraid the people I meet won’t like me.

Don’t you feel like you’re invading the privacy of these sick people?

I’m afraid that I’ll meet or talk to somebody at the hospital and discover later that they passed away.

Can my heart take it? And then, will I be able to represent their stories well enough?

It was September 4th and this was the first meeting of The Hospital Project, a theater seminar at ACES Educational Center for the Arts in New Haven. The students’ charge? In one semester, create and perform an original work of theater based on the experiences of chronically ill teenagers.

“People’s faces tend to get very grim when I tell them what we’re doing,” laughs Staci Swedeen, a playwright, actor, and co-teacher of the The Hospital Project, with theater director and ECA faculty member Peter Loffredo. It’s been weeks since the students first wrote their thoughts on the index cards, and the class is now in full swing, with the students swiftly approaching their December performance. “They have moved through their fears with incredibly open hearts and spirits,” Swedeen reflects.

The Hospital Project first began in the Child Life Arts and Enrichment (A&E) Program at Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital—a program that taps into the innate artistic abilities of young people during their hospital stays. Poet Aaron Jafferis and video artist Laki Vazakas have been resident artists with the program for some time—Jafferis since 2004; Vazakas since 2006. Under their mentorship, hospitalized teenagers have created over 175 individual and group videos and produced two “zines,” magazines of original writings.

Watching and reading the kids’ work, hospital staff became aware of issues they hadn’t fully appreciated before, says A&E program coordinator Janice Baker. Chronically ill teens were having difficulty returning to school. They felt misunderstood. Some were victims of email rumors. Some struggled due to changes in their appearance. “We came up with the idea of using their poems and videos as the basis for an educational project in a school setting,” Baker explains.

Theater was the art form of choice. “Theater is unique in the collaboration that it demands,” says Aaron Jafferis. “So much of the hospital experience is about isolation. Theater allows not just for expression, but also for connection.” So Janice Baker approached Ingrid Schaeffer, head of the Theater Department at ECA, and The Hospital Project was born.

The “generative” phase of the project came first, with the ECA students collecting and creating material. They absorbed videos and writings created by chronically ill teenagers in the A&E program. They worked with Jafferis and Vazakas, who attended the first six classes. They took a field trip: a “sensory exploration,” as Vazakas calls it, to Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital. During the visit the students learned about medical treatments, visited a patient in her room, and shot some video.

Then in October, four chronically ill teens visited the ECA class. It was a turning point for the students.

“Before they came,” recalls ECA student Sivan Battat, “a lot of our work was about death and illness and all bad things—how dark and cold it is. But they came and talked about all the things they love about being in the hospital, and how their illnesses have changed them as people. We can feel a difference in our work.”

“It brought life—not only into us, but into this project,” says Anna Lasala-Goettler. “Before they came, we said, ‘Well, we’re very ignorant about these things. It must all just be sad and downcast, nothing funny. These kids are sick and what’s good about their life?’ But when we talked to them, we realized they’re teenagers just like us.” Adds student Isaac Shub, “They have stories to tell.”

Karena Dozier was one of the chronically ill young people who visited the ECA class. Dozier, 20, a New London resident who currently attends Three Rivers Community College, has sickle cell anemia. She met Aaron Jafferis two years ago during one of her frequent hospital stays at Yale-New Haven. She was happy to participate in The Hospital Project. For Dozier, who speaks unflinchingly about her medical condition, this was an opportunity to correct some misconceptions—namely, that chronically ill young people are needy and helpless. “I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me,” she explains.

“It was very, very fun,” says Dozier of her experience in the ECA classroom. “Everyone was so welcoming. I felt sad after I left them, because there aren’t too many people who care about us and want to know what we’re going through. I’d just met all of these people and I felt I’d known them forever.” But while she and the other chronically ill students were the honored guests, when it came to theater improvisation, the ECA kids were the experts. “We did an improv about a girl who lost her hair due to chemo,” Dozier laughs. “We had three minutes to prepare. I was asking them for tips on how to act.”

Throughout The Hospital Project, the ECA students wrote scenes, monologues, and journal entries. Writing gave them the opportunity to process what they were seeing, hearing, and feeling—and to shape their insights into art. For student Inasia Woods, the writing process took a very personal twist, when her two cousins suffered medical emergencies within twenty-four hours of each other. The day after she visited the hospital with her ECA classmates, she was back in that same place—only this time, for a family crisis. “It was kind of hard to sleep on the couch, with the noises and the nurses going back and forth,” she remembers. “I wrote a two-and-a-half page monologue, from my own point of view as a visitor.”

Artistically, the students are experimenting with a new way of working. As student Jared Silverstone puts it, “there’s no script, no characters, not even a definite plot.”

“From an actor’s point of view,” says student Cassie DeMarco, “you not only want to do justice for the people you’ve seen at the hospital, you also want to do justice for the writer.”

The final performance (open to the public) will include a selection of writings by ECA students, alongside writings and video produced by chronically ill teens at the hospital. Director Peter Loffredo intends to pull the student actors back from the raw emotion of the material, allowing the audience to fill in “that last ten percent.” For Staci Swedeen—who says the piece won’t be linear but rather a series of vignettes—the humor (and there is plenty) will be their guide as they put this challenging material on its feet.

Both teachers are deeply impressed by their students’ commitment, openness and courage. Their writing, Loffredo says, “never ceases to knock our socks off.”

“The students have shown great empathy and sympathy,” Loffredo continues. “Not all of these kids will go into theater professionally, but I really believe that working on this project will make them better people in the long run.”

“This whole process has taught me not to judge people,” says ECA student Dayshona Hardin. “You never know what they’ve gone through, or what they’re going through.” “None of us really appreciate what it’s like to be in class,” Sivan Battat begins. The students laugh. “But once you start missing three weeks of school,” continues Sivan—and everyone begins to nod—“that’s what it’s like for teens with chronic illnesses.” “The day after we visited the hospital, my dad asked if I wanted to go out to eat,” recalls Melissa Ottaviano. “And I said no, I want to go home and cook dinner with you. My parents make the most amazing food,” she laughs, recalling the less-than-appetizing lunch trays in the hospital hallways.

For Tess Chardiet, there was the moment when one of the chronically ill teenagers said, “I wouldn’t trade my illness for anything.” Did that surprise her? “Yes,” she says. “I always thought…” She trails off. In her silence there’s a kind of wisdom, a respect for things that can’t be named. “Yes,” she repeats, “I was surprised.”

The Hospital Project will be performed on December 18 at 7:30 pm at ACES Educational Center for the Arts, 55 Audubon Street, New Haven. For more information, call 203-777-5451.

Nutmeg State Musical Riches

Hank Hoffman

Like the elves at the North Pole, local musicians have been busy this year. Whether your tastes run to jazz, folk or any of the myriad subgenres of underground rock, there could be a local CD—or vinyl record—just right for your holiday gift-giving.

“Winds of Change” are blowing, according to the smooth jazz group Airborne. The CD liner notes offer up a plea for peace, global unity and environmental consciousness. Social concern notwithstanding, this is mood music, firmly rooted in the sensuous jazz/funk/rock fusion sounds of the 1970’s. Guitars vamp over crisp drums and bubbly electric bass. Ethereal female vocals occasionally add color. When the horns or flute strut into the mix, they are there to spool out accessible melodies. Through the first nine songs, I was thinking, “Dim the lights. Airborne creates the atmosphere. Waterbed not included.” But, somewhat incongruously, in the final cut “Winds of Change (Reprise),” snippets of speeches by Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby and John Kennedy are intercut with recent recordings of Barack Obama. All this over airy jazz backing and a breathy female vocalist singing “winds of change. Uh, honey, I guess we’ll have to continue this later. Right now, we need to celebrate the vote.” www.airbornejazz.com.

If you yearn for a solid, sophisticated guitar jazz trio set, then “Aurora Nights” by the Ansonia-based George Lesiw Band fits the bill. The trio puts something of a twist on the mainstream jazz sound. They incorporate some progressive aspects of jazz fusion, without losing their bluesy soul. The songs are complex and instrumentally challenging, without falling into abstraction. And Lesiw, unlike many jazz guitarists, is not afraid to get down and dirty. His guitar tone on the first several songs is in the mellow midrange typical of jazz guitar. But with “Shaman in the Basement,” he kicks it up a notch. Crunchy chords open the song, the slamming accents growling from his amp. The fire just burns from there. www.myspace.com/georgelesiwband.

“Yizkor: Music of Memory,” recorded by David Chevan, with Hazzan Alberto Mizrahi and the Afro-Semitic Experience, is an interesting and beautiful musical/spiritual excursion. In the 1960’s, John Coltrane and his great quartet delved deep into the spiritual. He used modal jazz on albums like “A Love Supreme” to grasp the ineffable. For several years, Chevan (who plays upright bass) and pianist Warren Byrd have led The Afro-Semitic Experience in using jazz as a vehicle to explore primarily Jewish, but also African-American spiritual music. This is devotion twice over: to cultural tradition and to the music in both its religious and secular aspects. On this new record, they invited Hazzan Alberto Mizrahi to sing the Hebrew lyrics in cantorial style. From my lay perspective, it’s a successful fusion. The jazz arrangements are lush, yet filled with poignant open space. Reed player Will Bartlett’s occasional use of clarinet and flute suggest klezmer music, as does the string playing (violin and resonator guitar) of Stacy Phillips. In Byrd’s meticulously voiced chords, I sense a bow to the modal constructs of McCoy Tyner, pianist in Coltrane’s quartet. Throughout, Mizrahi’s voice is rooted in the arrangements. At the same time, in works like “Psalm 16 Shiviti Adonai L’Negdi Tamid (I Keep God Before Me at All Times),” his heartfelt wails and whisperings ratchet up the emotional temperature. www.chevan.addr.com.

On the CD “Junior Number 13,” Lara Herscovitch’s vocal lines unfold gracefully, like a swirl of smoke in a blues club, spiraling up to the high notes. This record touches on jazz, folk, world music (African, Brazilian), the Joni Mitchell singer-songwriter school and 1960’s pop (in “Bozo Bounces Back”). Herscovitch’s voice is the thread that knits everything together into a coherent quilt. “The Day the Jury Got Away” has a jaunty Rickie Lee Jones groove that complements its lighthearted, tightly written lyrics. Herscovitch also has the requisite left-leaning folk social conscience, heard here in “Decisiónes” and “Just Not Here.” But she also demonstrates a deft sense of humor, cracking wise about charming a police officer into letting her off without a speeding ticket in “Mr. Officer” (recorded live, just Herscovitch and her acoustic guitar). www.LaraHerscovitch.com.

It’s (almost) all in the family with two shoreline-based folk groups, ShoreGrass and Just Harmony. Husband and wife team Frank and Barbara Shaw form the core of ShoreGrass. They are joined on the “Going Home” CD by their son Jonathan, a professional musician who took time off from touring to play bass on the set. Although originals comprise most of the songs, they are crafted well within the idiom. The Shaws are joined by mandolinist and vocalist Paul Pozzi, fiddle player Bud Morrisroe and renowned local traditional music virtuoso Stacy Phillips, also a member of The Afro-Semitic Experience (fiddle and dobro). ShoreGrass doesn’t tart up their presentation with modern touches. Their bluegrass is tinged with shades of gospel, country and folk—American roots music to its backwoods core. www.shoregrass.com.

The Eppler-Epstein family—accompanied by guitarist Rick Calvert—form Just Harmony. While harmony singing predominates on their CD “Songs of Justice, Peace & Freedom,” there is more than just harmony to this music. The group brings guitar, piano, flute, keyboard and percussion into the blend. But in another sense, this folk group’s name is apropos. “Just” Harmony refers to their commitment to singing songs of justice and the struggle for freedom. Their repertoire is drawn from many traditions: American labor organizing, the civil rights movement, African freedom struggles and efforts to forge peace in the Middle East. The blending of the voices of daughters Rebecca and Sarah, with those of Calvert and their parents Steve and Amy, is not just a pleasing mix of timbres. It also speaks (or sings) to the point of Just Harmony. Creating the culture of a peaceful and caring world is both about the urgency of the present and a legacy for the future. www.JustHarmony.net.

While The Heaths’ “On Christmas Day” bears a 2004 copyright, Sarah Heath noted in a letter to me that this is the first year that the CD will be available through national outlets like cdbaby.com and Amazon.com. (Continuing our family theme, The Heaths are sisters Sarah Heath, Lucy Heath McLellan and Peggy Heath Ogilvy.) It is a sprightly mix of contemporary and traditional Christmas songs and carols drawn from the classical, folk and pop world. Some, such as “Caroling, Caroling,” are sung a cappella, voiced with soothing harmonies. Others have tasteful accompaniment. Piano and strings envelop “This Most Wondrous Day”—written by their father Fenno Heath, longtime director of the Yale Glee Club—in the wood stove warmth of a snow dappled morning. This is devotional music for a contemplative Christmas, not themes for unwrapping Wii players. Not to worry, though. Santa Claus makes a couple of cameos, in a pleasingly understated arrangement of “The Christmas Song” and “North Pole Broadcast,” a Heath home recording from 1959. www.theheaths.com.

Rare among local bands, The Reducers have been raising hell in state punk and indie rock clubs since the late 1970’s (Peter Detmold and Hugh Birdsall on guitars, Steve Kaika on bass, Tom Trombley on drums and everyone singing). They aren’t family, but they might as well be. On “Guitar, Bass & Drums,” their fourth full length album, this New London institution serves up another bamalama of barroom-ready, working class rock ‘n’ roll. Every Reducers record—as was once written of the first Ramones album—sounds like a greatest hits collection. This one is no different. Purity of intention matches intensity of execution. They aren’t ready to slip quietly into their twilight years. Opening “Don’t Ya Wanna,” Detmold sings wistfully, “Everybody’s playin’ golf/I don’t know what’s going on/You just go along without me/I don’t want to tag along.” As the music swells, the guitars chording with increasing urgency, Detmold turns passionate: “Get me to a nightspot/Put me in a crowd/Don’t ya wanna/Don’t ya wanna/Don’t ya wanna rock?” It’s not really a question—it’s more of an imperative. www.thereducers.com.

The group Bottle Up & Go really does wanna rock. On their EP “These Bones,” this two-piece band traffics in raw, emotional rock ‘n’ roll—blues filtered through punk, or vice versa: sweaty and crazed. When the slide skates across guitar strings in “51 Weeks, 7 Days,” it sounds like a car skidding on dry pavement at 80 miles per hour. In fact, Keenan Mitchell’s guitar work often sounds like it’s swerving all over the road, careening through chords with abandon. Drummer Fareed Sajan is the anchor, often splashing around his kit like a swimmer going under in choppy seas. They are joined on five songs by saxophonist Louis Carrico. His caterwauling tone fits right in. www.myspace.com/bottleupandgoband.

They and The Children dish up a concentrated stew of roiling, post-hardcore aggro on their CD “Home.” Brian Frenette shreds his vocal chords on tracks like “Mechanical,” “Exploding Inevitable” and “Creatures Who Stopped Living.” Ryan Gorman’s guitar mostly roars, but as “Exploding Inevitable” winds to a close, the guitar peals a chorused and reverbed arpeggio, finally bleeding feedback into the next song. The digipack case comes printed with lyrics, which are quite helpful in deciphering Frenette’s leather-lunged vocals. They and The Children dine out on the guttural bellow and guitar blast. Still, within the parameters of the genre, the group has a strong feel for dynamics. The final cut “Gift,” moshes through sections of (relatively) restrained arpeggios, slamming chords, ringing overtones (a la Sonic Youth) and a Pollockesque spatter of notes, finally culminating in a decrescendo of sludgy, sustained chords. www.myspace.com/theyandthechildren.

Singer Shellye Valauskas started out playing in the singer-songwriter mode. But she has found her niche with her group The Shellye Valauskas Experience, crafting songs of love and betrayal into pop confections. The sweet and the bitter co-mingle on “Box It Up,” their new EP. Valauskas is a natural at the lyrical turn that captures the heart of post-relationship awkwardness. Here she is, tied up in knots on “This Side of Goodbye:” “I don’t know how to talk to you/After all that I’ve been through/I fake a smile, I pretend that I’m fine/Then I kick myself cause I realize it eases your mind.” Her strong, grown-up voice is showcased well amid the power pop arrangements. Co-producer Dean Falcone is also the band’s guitarist. Falcone layers keyboards, joins in on harmonies and fires off Beatlesque guitar crescendos. Tacked onto the end of the last cut, “Hard To See” is a reprise of all the EP tracks in instrumental versions. If there was a lyrics sheet included, this would be great for party sing-alongs. www.myspace.com/thshellyevalauskasexperience.

In the past few years, New Haven-based Safety Meeting Records (www.safetymeeting.net), run by Carlos Wells, has established itself as an indie rock label of impeccable taste. Simply put, if Safety Meeting puts out a record, it’s worth having. This year they put out four full-length albums, by Titles, Quiet Life, M.T. Bearington and The Mountain Movers. Titles’ “Up With the Sun,” is a well-realized indie rock CD, descended from a tradition that began with the Velvet Underground, evolved with Television and continued with such college radio favorites as Pavement and Archers of Loaf. Vocalist/guitarist Brad Amorosino sings in a husky voice chafed with weariness, reminiscent of Jeff Tweedy of Wilco. There is a hint of country roots in the occasional pedal steel or slide guitar played by Matt Wilson. The disc features some great guitar interplay—pretty chords, like those that spice up the beginning of “Here Comes the End” and tasteful single note outbursts. “Piano Girl” is a virtual primer on how to craft emotional dynamics into a song, with pin drop silence whispers and cascading chords. Amorosino sings, “And I’ve got to get these melodies out of my head/One look, like I’ll crush you or whisk you away/Your voice sounds like the woods/Or a fire...A good idea, full of holes.” listentotitles.com.

Quiet Life has packed up and headed west. Before they did, however, they released “Act Natural,” a rootsy slice of indie rock. The CD is filled with down-home sonic signifiers—weepy steel guitar on “Leah,” bluesy harmonica, the spaghetti western guitar and banjo picking in “Trying To Get Home.” Where is home? It sounds like it might be a San Francisco ballroom, circa early 1967, with archetypes of the frontier cowboy-west metamorphosing into DayGlo visions on a frontier of hallucinogenic experimentation. Quiet Life skillfully manages this tension throughout. Back porch intimacy is balanced against electric raves, reminiscent of Neil Young’s Crazy Horse, as in “Every Dime.” www.myspace.com/quietlife.

With the M.T. Bearington and Mountain Movers releases, Safety Meeting has shifted its approach. Rather than release the albums as compact discs, the label has pressed them up as numbered, limited-edition, 12-inch vinyl records (with a CD-R of the recording included). M.T. Bearington’s “Cloak of Nouns and Loss” is a home-recorded project by Matthew Thomas. Thomas sings in a high voice, his playful lyrics floating over woozy, psychedelic pop arrangements. This music is deeply rooted in the late-sixties moment when “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and the Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds” liberated rock auteurs from the restriction of guitars, bass and drums (no offense, Reducers). What is striking is how Thomas has used Apple’s GarageBand recording program—almost a digital toy—to craft soundscapes that are anything but sterile. These songs breathe. This is “rock” as quiet music, bedroom musings, and children’s tales (but not childish). Thomas doesn’t go for the bombastic hook. Instead, he takes light acoustic guitar arpeggios and colors them with layered vocal harmonies, sound effects (the barking dogs in “Keep Warm with Animals”) and occasionally some light drums and bass. Warmly ringing glockenspiel figures enliven “Fate Finder.” He’s not afraid to discreetly season with a little dissonance, using electric guitar to add a slightly off piquancy to the latter cut. www.myspace.com/mtbearingtons.

With The Mountain Movers’ second record, the vinyl “Let’s Open Up the Chest,” leader Dan Greene lays on the distortion. Compared to “We Have Walked in Hell” from 2006, this is a more guitar-heavy offering. Thick barre chords propel most songs, often bolstered by a further wash of sizzling fuzz tone. The textures are fleshed out with electric piano, organ and horn charts informed by reggae and 1960’s soul. Erik Elligers adds lively flute on “Last Chance for Summer.” “When I Die,” which leads off Side B, is sublime, a moderate tempo wash of horns, guitar and organ. In his aching voice, Greene sings, “When I die, I’ll mix in with the sky/I’ll be the sun that shines/and wakes you from your bed.” It’s beautiful, sad and uplifting all at once. The cover is a work of art in itself, both front and back reproduced from watercolor paintings by Greene. www.myspace.com/themountainmovers.

The Nutmeg State as a 1960’s rock mecca? Who knew. “Don’t Press Your Luck: The In Sound of 60’s Connecticut” is a compilation released this year by the highly regarded Sundazed reissue label. This superb disc reveals that local suburban garages harbored more than just station wagons. Collected from the tape vaults of Trod Nossel Studios in Wallingford, these songs prove that local teen combos could more than hold their own with national groups, in the post-British Invasion era. Some of these songs were released as obscure 45s, now prized by collectors. Among them are tunes by local teen club faves The Shags and The Bram Rigg Set. But there is also a wealth of great cuts by unknown bands—Wesleyan’s Uranus and the Five Moons, for example—that are available for the first time. Laden with fuzz tone like the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction,” these songs simmer with unrequited lust. It was a moment that only lasted a couple of years, between the British Invasion and the onslaught of heavy rock. The only song here that cracked the charts is “No Good to Cry” by the Wildweeds, featuring a pre-NRBQ Al Anderson. As more of a blue-eyed soul tune, it’s a bit out of place among all the garage rock. A worthy piece of rock archaeology. www.sundazed.com.

To seek out these recordings, check out the musicians’ websites or sites like cdbaby.com. Some of these releases are also available locally through Cutler’s records in New Haven, Exile on Main Street in Branford or—particularly for the underground rock—Redscroll Records in Wallingford.

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