nothin Wallace & Sasso Shoot The Moon | New Haven Independent

Wallace & Sasso Shoot The Moon

Dreamer, Say,” the first track from Stuff of Stars — the debut album of New Haven-based duo Kat Wallace and David Sasso — starts with two instruments, a fiddle and a mandocello, floating upward in unison, like a hymn, but then with a turn at the end, unexpected, but satisfying.

Dreamer, say, will you dream for me / A wild sweet dream of a foreign land,” Sasso sings. Whose border sips of a foaming sea / With lips of coral and silver sand.”

If the words seem quite poetic, they are. The lyrics to Dreamer, Say” and the third song on the album, The Best Is Good Enough,” are from the late 19th-century works of James Whitcomb Riley, a favorite poet from David’s home state of Indiana,” the liner notes explain.

But on the The Best Is Good Enough,” Wallace and Sasso augment Riley’s original poem with a couple verses of their own — to this reviewer’s ear, indistinguishable from Whitcomb’s own language. Both lyrically and musically, this kind of mix of found sources and original material, the planting of feet in traditional music while finding plenty of room to stretch out, permeates the entire album, making Stuff of Stars a thoughtfully innovative record.

The album also finds the two musicians figuring out just how varied they can make their sound from song to song without sacrificing cohesion. The lush, warm Dreamer, Say” moves to the more pointilist I’ll Stay Around,” a honestly bittersweet ode to East Haven, where Wallace grew up. Wallace and Sasso get pretty close to straightforward bluegrass on The Best Is Good Enough,” and then turn to downright pretty on Wild One,” which showcases Wallace’s and Sasso’s abilities with tight harmonies.

Meanwhile, Wallace and Sasso take Farewell to Trion” — a traditional fiddle tune Sasso learned from local legend Stacy Phillips shortly before Phillips died in 2018 — and use its cascading melody as a starting point for further melodic and harmonic explorations, turning the tune inside out and righting it again. They outdo that with the original fiddle tune Omega.”

An anthemic take on Waterbound” and a quiet Dust of Snow,” using Robert Frost lines for lyrics, round out the album. But it’s Stuff of Stars” — based on the Carl Sagan quote that we are made of star stuff” — that may stick the most. Augmented by producer Mike Block on cello, Wallace and Sasso are in their fullest form. The song is familiar enough to be welcoming, yet with enough chromaticism to keep things interesting and eerily beautiful. Wallace and Sasso unfurl knotty harmonies with ease before Wallace takes flight on a sweeping solo that the cello answers. Then they bring it all quietly home.

‘We are made of starstuff.’ / It’s in your skin, it’s in my bones,” Sasso sings. And even when we’ve lost hope and story, / Stuff of stars, we’re not alone.”

Find Kat Wallace and David Sasso’s Stuff of Stars on Bandcamp here.

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