12″ Lathe. Edition of 28. Numbered. Riso Looseleaf cover / back art printed at Looky Here in Greenfield, MA.

$60

In Western Massachusetts, the evening of Friday October 30, 2020 was cold and wet. But this Village of Spaces performance (with Dan Beckman-Moon, Amy Moon O.S., Kaethe Hostetter and Sean Breidenthal) took place in the lush backyard of a sun-dappled Santa Cruz house, with flowers and colors bursting everywhere. It was enough, just visually, for all of us to wish for instantaneous transportation 3000 miles west. That feeling was only amplified when the music started.

The set began with “Song for Moon” (calling to mind the classicism of early Pearls Before Swine) and rambled through a variety of other acoustic settings, with an overall heft that would have been at home on a Raccoon Records album. From Amy’s gorgeous a capella tune “The Night Is Long” to the clear, genteel instrumental tones of “Little Wind and Sea,” this is music that clearly survived transplantation from the icy woods of Strange Maine to the warm soil of coastal California. 

In fact, it’s pretty hard to keep from imagining these sounds as the real successor to a long line of crazy Santa Cruz folk-rockers whose lineage runs through Oganookie, Bobby Brown, Robert Martin and onward. Village of Spaces’ work here does bend toward the pastoral pole of the sonic rainbow, but it is surely infused with the same sweet freakiness that enlivened all its stylistic forebears.

This is a wonderful ride through the sunshine no matter what your head is doing otherwise.
–Byron  Coley, 2021