From her early days, staying late after-hours at her video rental store job in Maine to record songs, to co-producing and arranging her four studio records, Aly Spaltro has remained focused on music that connects, empowers and builds community. She built her fanship the old-fashioned way, getting in front of audiences and projecting her poetic confessionals, silencing rowdy crowds with an a cappella opening song in the center of a dark stage. Spaltro was quick to develop a reputation as a breakout star in New England, and then expanded slowly outwards, moving to New York at twenty to continue work on the songs that would become Ripely Pine. Her voice has never wavered, has grown more honest and open with time, and anyone witnessing the long lines of fans seeking signatures after her performances can see how her work has impacted fans. Her live shows are revelations, a further deep dive into what makes Ripely Pine such a mainstay.
Spaltro is celebrating ten years of Ripely Pine with the release of a 5xLP Box Set, IN THE MAMMOTH NOTHING OF THE NIGHT out August 18 on Ba Da Bing Records. With the original songs remastered, as well as reams of additional material produced and arranged by Spaltro and mixed by original co- producer Nadim Issa, IN THE MAMMOTH NOTHING OF THE NIGHT captures the time, mood, art and ambition of Aly Spaltro in her early twenties, who had already accumulated years of playing and self-recording experience before laying down tracks for this giant of a debut.
“I wrote some of these songs when I was 18, learning how to play the instruments and record with my digital 8-track along the way,” Spaltro says, reflecting on the time. She talks about IN THE MAMMOTH NOTHING OF THE NIGHT with a sense of a mission. “These tracks have haunted me, because they haven’t had a home for all these years. I found all these alternate track listings in my notebooks. Any of them could have ended up on the record,” Spaltro says. “This box set is a way to honor that whole time, the beginning of the path of my life. Releasing this project feels like just that; I’m able to look back on where I’ve come from, and then gently close that door behind me and keep moving, keep growing.”

There’s something refreshingly humane about uncertainty; about having the guts to try, even if you might be wrong. This is the central tenant of Humbird’s third full-length album, Right On, a radical ethos in this soap-box age, and an effort worth turning up the amps for, resulting in the project’s most electric, playful, mettled record yet.
The majority of the songs showcase a locked-in rock trio, a progression from the contemplative folk musings of their previous releases. Even so, Right On incorporates friendly winks to the more whimsical, soundscape-y improvisations that audiences have come to expect from a Humbird performance - electrified, gritty, Midwest Americana with a little magic fairy dust thrown in.
For loyal fans and new Humbird listeners alike, Right On is a mischievously kind offering: a whole heap of songs that are unafraid to bask in the perfectly ordinary and also excruciating possibility that sometimes we’re right, often we’re wrong, but no matter what, music can meet us where we’re at and keep us company along the way.