06/08/2023
Great review of Out and About in Dusted today!
"In a basement one rainy evening several years ago I saw Mary Staubitz perform a set as her improvisational noise alter-ego Donna Parker. Midway through her set, everyone’s phones went off at once, making a familiarly awful sound: Flash flood warning.
Later, the booker grumbled that people should have had their phones off. Maybe he had a point, but when it happened, as I recall, Staubitz laughed. For a moment, the harsh, robotic staccato of the alert had melded with her set.
Staubitz and Russ Waterhouse, her partner in art and in general, often blur the lines between life and music, and they do so here on Out and About. Starting with the bird songs and neighborhood chatter heard from their stoop in Pawtucket, RI, the album moves through a variety of lively locales. There are stops at an antique market, a hectic school lunchroom, a bar where the regulars argue about music. One barfly challenges some real or hypothetical person to listen to Buddy Rich and Mel Tormé “and come back and tell me you don’t like jazz.”
Some moments, like that last one, are literal, others begin as extended patches of white noise which might eventually take the shape of something familiar: A copy machine, a car wash, a breathy snore.
The audioscapes of Staubitz and Waterhouse are Les Blank-ian in their loosely held documentary storytelling style. Out and About’s weirdo spontaneity is rooted in thoughtful construction. It’s dreamy, oddly wholesome Americana: Nostalgic, funny, strange, surprising and satisfying.
Side B was recorded in 2022, during a trip to the Hudson Valley. At Tubby’s, the duo plays a set that echoes the sounds we’ve already heard from the streets and rooms of Pawtucket and beyond, as if the duo is regurgitating their daily lives on stage. Living and performing, forever intertwined."
Margaret Welsh
Out and About by Staubitz and Waterhouse In a basement one rainy evening several years ago I saw Mary Staubitz perform a set as her improvisational noise alter-ego Donna Parker. Midway through her...
