Inspired by Herman Melville's classic man-vs.-sea novel Moby Dick, singer Michael LoPresti formed the local indie rock outfit the Lighthouse and the Whaler some ten years ago. The band’s 2008 EP A Whisper, A Clamor caught the attention of an editor at the hipster-approved music magazine Paste, and a track from that record eventually showed up on a sampler CD that the magazine released in 2009.
The band's been busy touring and recording ever since.
Now, the group has just announced it’ll release its new EP, Paths, on Oct. 6. It's the follow-up to the band’s last studio effort, 2015's Mont Royal. On Oct. 5 at the Grog Shop, the band will kick off a four-week national headline tour.
You can hear the title track here.
“Paths is an EP about changes,” says frontman Michael LoPresti in a press release. “It’s not easy to be in a band. We’re constantly battling for relevancy while trying to make music we love. Most of the time, we’re doing that while trying to balance families and providing for them. I look back at my life, and I look at all the things I could have done better. It’s not really regret; it’s more realization then anything. We’re all on a path and I just want to find mine."
LoPresti cites a Robert Frost poem as the inspiration for the album's theme.
"'The Road Less Traveled' ends with ‘Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled/And that has made all the difference.’ That really says it better than I ever could.”
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