Heather Maloney: From Opera to Singer/Songwriter

Janet Reynolds — Fri, 10 Nov 2017 08:27:28 +0000

Northampton musician Heather Maloney has been compared to Aimee Mann and Joni Mitchell. Decide for yourself with her new EP.

In late 2007, Heather Maloney was studying music theory and operatic vocals at a New Jersey college when she decided to go on a meditation retreat in Barre, Massachusetts, between semesters. It was a transformative event for the accomplished songstress.

“It was just immediately clear to me that I needed to spend more time here,” says Maloney, a pianist and self-taught guitarist. “The retreat, it leveled me—turned my world upside down. I tried to get back onto a musical path, but I couldn’t shake my initial experience at this retreat.”

Not long after Maloney’s first visit to the Bay State, she returned, filling a vacant post at the meditation center. “I worked there for three years, and I’ve never left,” Maloney says.

Slowly, Maloney began writing, returning to her musical roots. She credits New England with restoring her creative nature. “When I play a show here in New England, I feel like [the audience is] really thinking about the concepts and the stories and the characters in my songs,” Maloney says. “They’re sort of thinking of the songs critically, and that can be super intimidating. If I play shows out West, people aren’t necessarily thinking of songs critically; they’re more ‘feeling’ them.”

“Living in this area made me more of a storyteller,” she adds, “and has made me more of a thinker when it comes to my songwriting.”

Both critics and fans love Maloney’s eclectic, rapturous indie-rock sound and her hypnotic, lush vocals, which have drawn comparisons to the likes of Joni Mitchell and Aimee Mann. She’s released four full-length offerings, including 2015’s Making Me Break, and a single EP. But soon, she’ll issue her second—a 6-track EP called Just Enough Sun.

Maloney says the forthcoming, mostly acoustic effort is “raw and cathartic,” and calls it “the most vulnerable thing I’ve ever created”—the kind of record she wouldn’t have been able to make in the Garden State. “I really have a love/hate relationship with New Jersey; yet, to be fully honest, I didn’t realize what it felt like to belong somewhere until I left,” she says. “I realized, living in Massachusetts in particular, that this is what it feels like to belong somewhere. It has a little bit of an edge but it’s a place where the arts are appreciated, and the people are creative. At this point, I’m definitely a Masshole.”

Want to hear what Maloney listens to when she’s not performing? Check out our Take a Listen Spotify channel. While you’re there, you can listen to what other musicians we’ve profiled have on their playlists.

Heather Maloney, Singer-Songwriter
Northampton, Massachusetts
Website
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Top image: Heather Maloney. All photos by Kevin Hill.

The post Heather Maloney: From Opera to Singer/Songwriter appeared first on Take Magazine.

The Hanged Man Lives

Janet Reynolds — Tue, 19 Sep 2017 13:59:59 +0000

Musician Ted Leo moves from punk and a collaboration with Aimee Mann to the personal in his new album, The Hanged Man.

Ted Leo has always been a bit of a traveling troubadour—musically and literally. He’s lived everywhere from Indiana to New Jersey, New York City, Boston and Washington, D.C. before landing in Rhode Island. And his music has ranged from punk to a recent duo he formed with Aimee Mann called The Both. Now, in Leo’s new album, The Hanged Man—his 10th—he takes his music on a more personal journey. Recorded in his home studio in South County Rhode Island, he self-released the album September 8th.

Leo talks about the personal focus of the album. “I’ve always written about personal stuff, but this one happens to deal with some stuff that’s maybe more personal other things,” Leo says on the making of the album. “The body of songs that I had to choose from was from after the last seven years, and it was a massive amount. The album I would end up with was the album that I felt right to me. It felt like the album I needed to make.”

Tracks like “Moon Out Of Phase” and “You’re Like Me” are electrifyingly fuzzy, while others like “Can’t Go Back” and “The Nazarene” highlight Leo’s piano skills. He’s joined on some of the tracks by drummer Chris Wilson and Rhode Island saxophonist Adrienne Berry.

“At least the last three or four records that I’ve put out under my own name were largely made within the context of being an artist who is on tour with a band all the time,” he says on the incorporation of different elements with the new album. “They were sort of written in short bursts and recorded in a one-week studio session. While I don’t think I’ve ever stifled myself in my desire to bring other elements into the recordings, the nature of them was such that they reflected the live version of the band at the time. Not really having that happening very much at all for the last seven or eight years, in retrospect, helped me take off a seatbelt that I didn’t really know I was strapped into.”

Leo’s relationship with the Ocean State started over two decades ago. “I love it here and I’ve spent a lot of time here over the last 20 years,” Leo says. “Because I’m out and working a lot when I am home, and because I don’t actually live in the city, I think we do tend to stay home a lot.

“I’ve literally not been to the beach at all this summer,” Leo continues. “I have not been in the water. I love the beach and I love swimming in the ocean, but I’ve just been so busy that I haven’t forced myself to go down and take a walk by there every now and then. It’s a mile from where I’m at, and I almost never get there.”

Leo’s lack of beach time will likely continue as he travels New England in support of The Hanged Man. He and his backing band The Pharmacists will be at Brighton Music Hal l in Allston, Massachusetts on September 17th, and at the Columbus Theatre in Providence on December 2nd with Bill Janovitz from Boston alternative rock stalwarts Buffalo Tom opening up. In between, he’ll have a solo performance at the Dr. Martens store on Newbury Street in Boston on October 5th.

Want to hear what‘s on Leo‘s playlist when he‘s not performing or writing tunes himself? Check out our Take a Listen Spotify channel. While you‘re there, check out what other musicians we’ve profiled are listening to as well.

Ted Leo
Wakefield, Rhode Island
Website
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All photos courtesy of Ted Leo

The post The Hanged Man Lives appeared first on Take Magazine.

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