After spending nearly three decades immersed in the Western Massachusetts music scene, first as part of the alt-country foursome the Scud Mountain Boys and then with the vintage-style rocker Ray Mason, it’s finally time for singer, bassist and songwriter Stephen Desaulniers to take center stage with his first solo album, a self-titled effort he released under the name Invisible Runner.
As his resume would suggest, the music here has a rootsy cast on 10 songs ranging from Americana stompers to more delicate acoustic fare to careening country workouts full of flashy, juiced-up guitars. Opener “Circle Tree” is the former, a mid-tempo country-rocker powered by gritty, overdriven electric guitar and adorned with pedal steel guitar and tight harmony vocals. The pedal steel delivers silvery licks on the verses, before trading deft leads with the electric guitar on the second half of the song.
With a mix of acoustic guitars, mandolin, steel guitar and harmony vocals, “Warm Loving Ground” evokes the late-night kitchen-table country of the Scud Mountain Boys, the Northampton band with whom Desaulniers played in the first half of the ’90s and again when the group reunited in 2012. The song contrasts with the next one on the album, “Dry, Dry, Dry,” which opens with a dusty descending mandolin part that’s deceptively folky: after about 10 seconds, the tune shifts as galloping, treble-soaked guitars come tearing through over a raucous train beat.
Though Desaulniers digs into that rollicking style elsewhere with the blustery guitars and rattling banjo of “Walking Tall,” most of “Invisible Runner” is more toned down. He drops his clear tenor to an intimate murmur over acoustic guitar on “Washing Day,” while pedal steel floats over acoustic chords and Desaulniers’ voice on “The Rising Son.”
He enlisted a deep roster of local talent to help him flesh out the songs, including his Scuds/Ray Mason bandmate Tom Shea, along with Joel Stroetzel of Killswitch Engage and Brothers Born; Bob Hennessey of Haunt and Ware River Club; Jason Smith of Fancy Trash; Bradford Hutchison of Jim and Jenny and the Pine Tops; Doug Beaumier of the Lonesome Brothers; and Mike Wyzik of Brothers Born, Van Eyes and Quiet Union.
Together, Desaulniers and his collaborators have made an album that is at once immediate and reserved, and for every lick or lyric that gets right up in your face, there’s a corresponding layer to peel back. It’s as solid and hearty a debut as you could hope to hear, and though Desaulniers clearly didn’t rush it, “Invisible Runner” feels like it has arrived at just the right time.