The verdant forests and rolling hills surrounding this old farmhouse were the inspiration for Robert Frost’s early career. The poems that would make up “A Boy’s Will” were written here between 1900 and 1911, and the landscape and people of northern New England traveled with Frost as he created the verse that would become “North […]
The UMass Amherst campus is a museum of American design, with 19th-century buildings juxtaposed with structures created by some of the most prominent modern architects. This treasure trove enjoys few protections, however, as the university administration has been reluctant to agree to a long-term preservation plan or to nominate its buildings for the National Register […]
The Grumman-St. John House has witnessed more than 265 years of Norwalk’s history and even survived the burning of the city by the British during the Revolution. It now faces a similar fate if the Norwalk Inn & Conference Center’s plan to expand its facilities is approved. Local preservationists and the state of Connecticut argue […]
If you drive down Main Street in Holyoke, Massachusetts, you’ll see the old block-long storefronts, broken and gapped now as tenement after tenement is condemned and demolished. Sometimes you can still see the rubble strewn around these empty lots, but mostly they’ve been cleared away, leaving fresh, undisturbed lawns of grass. Preservationists hate grass — […]
The Winterpills blew onto the national music scene like a bitter wind with their hit single “Broken Arm.” Their sophomore album, “The Light Divides,” builds solidly on the haunting tone of their critically acclaimed self-titled début, which gives hope that the best is yet to come. This Northampton-based act avoids the insincerity that plagues most […]
Though I don’t own up to it in “The Life and Death of the Skinner Coffee House” (because it wasn’t pertinent), I was one of the grad students working with Joseph Krupczynski on the project in Holyoke, Massachusetts. The pictures and video here are part of the presentation we gave to the mayor in December […]
After ten albums and twenty years in the folk scene, Patty Larkin doesn’t have to prove anything to anyone, but with the release of Watch the Sky it appears she decided to anyway. Taking the term “personal project” to a new level, Larkin wrote, edited, and produced the entire album by herself. She also provided […]
It’s okay to occasionally steal away talent from the rest of the country. New England should be happy to have Boise-transplant Eilen Jewell filling our snowy mountaintop juke joints with songs of dusty Midwestern highways and rail yards. On the strength of her summer release Letters from Sinners and Strangers she’s made a big splash […]
For all the Yankee readers who pine for the days when poetry graced our pages (and I count myself among that number) The Brightness comes to us now as a kind of consolation. Anais Mitchell has all the makings of a New England poet laureate. Born on a Vermont sheep farm she took a degree […]
As you may have guessed from the title and the whimsical, bare-footed cover photo, this is an album about life. Or more precisely, it is a celebration of life. Rani Arbo and Daisy Mayhem have been playing together now for seven years. In that time they have shared the ups and downs of being modern […]
This album definitely fits the bill of local music. Bella Voce, a professional women’s choir in Vermont, teamed up with composer Gwyneth Walker, a fellow Green Mountain woman who hails from a dairy farm in Braintree, to produceNow Let Us Sing, the choir’s first release. This record isn’t really my cup of tea, but I’m […]
Shepherdess is a group of Boston-based music workhorses, each with at least two other band credits to their name. The band’s sound is straight out of 1995 and I love them for that. This album sounds a lot like what the music of this last decade could have been if Emo and boy bands […]
