QUICK HITS: AMY MANTIS & THE SPACE BETWEEN

“I wanted to record an album that was unequivocally mine.”

Despite live music being very scarce, touring being put on hold, and uncertainty clouding the entire industry as a whole due to COVID-19, singles, EPs and full-length albums are still coming out on a weekly basis. It’s a bright spot for music in 2020, and fortunately this year has brought a bunch of gems for our ears in various genres.

Furthermore, all this new recorded music is a testament that artists and bands are willing to jump in the studio during the pandemic in order to let their creative juices flow. This has certainly been that case in Boston’s local scene, with a ton of great new tracks and records released since the dawn of stay-at-home orders.

Rock trio Amy Mantis & The Space Between recently released their debut full-length, A Place To Land. While making the album, they set out to do what a ton of other acts always aim for, which is capturing their live sound. To that end, the band worked with Sean McGlaughlin at 37′ Productions on the album and the quality shows.

“We love working with Sean,” Mantis said. “He’s unparalleled at what he does and he’s just great people. He creates an atmosphere that’s encouraging, exciting, and efficient, and there’s no limit to what he’s willing to do to get the sounds you want for your record. He also has so much fantastic gear, his studio is a musician’s paradise. There’s just nothing else like it in the area.”

“The vision behind A Place to Land was that I wanted to record an album that was unequivocally mine,” Mantis added. “In late 2018, the band underwent a lineup change that brought us from a quartet with two singer-songwriters to a power trio with one singer-songwriter. I felt like it was an opportunity to own what I had been working towards since I started my first band almost a decade prior. When we started playing shows as a trio, we discovered that the mix worked exceptionally well.

“I wanted to capture the live energy and power of this lineup, and I felt that the songs we had were a representation of both where I had been musically and where I was looking to go. Everyone involved including Sean, my bandmates, drummer Eric Marshall and bassist Jeff Fogleman worked toward that vision enthusiastically, and I think it shows on the album.”

amymantis.com

ROB DUGUAY

Rob Duguay is an arts & entertainment journalist based in Providence, RI who is originally from Shelton, CT. Outside of DigBoston, he also writes for The Brooklyn Rail, The Providence Journal, The Newport Daily News, The Worcester Telegram & Gazette, New Noise Magazine, Flood Magazine and numerous other publications. While covering mostly music, he has also written about film, TV, comedy, theatre, visual art, food, drink, sports and cannabis.