ALL THINGS MUSIC
PAGE 6 • GO! MAGAZINE
Thursday, February 4, 2021 • The buLLeTIN
Bandcampin’: Good stuff for your ears
BY BEN SALMON • The Bulletin
B
andcamp is an online music platform used largely by independent artists and record labels to stream songs and sell merchandise. It’s also a vibrant virtual
community teeming with interesting sounds just waiting to be discovered. Each week, I’ll highlight three releases available on the site that are well worth
your time and attention. If you find something you dig, please consider supporting the artist with a purchase.
Jeff Parker
“The New Breed”
For the past couple of decades, Jeff Parker
has been one of the most dynamic — and,
thus, busiest — guitarists in the American
underground, playing with a wide range
of jazz and experimental artists like Joshua
Redman, Rob Mazurek, Smog, Jason Mo-
ran, Brian Blade and, most consistently,
Chicago post-rock giants Tortoise. And like
many busy sidemen, Parker put his own
music on the back burner for years, at least
in part to focus on others’ work (and to keep
the gigs flowing, presumably). Recently,
though, he has returned to his interest in
mingling beats, samples, live instruments
and improvised jazz, and the results have
been intoxicating. His most recent album,
“Suite for Max Brown,” was one of 2020’s
best, but start with 2016’s “The New Breed,”
a collection of electro-jazz-rock-hop that’s
every bit as rich and warm as it is meticu-
lous and ambitious.
Arlo Parks
“Collapsed in Sunbeams”
Arlo Parks is a young British singer-song-
writer and poet who is destined for big
things and has been at least since she re-
leased her phenomenal debut single “Cola”
back in 2018 — and maybe since the be-
ginning of time. That sounds like hyper-
bole, but the ease with which Parks brings
together reliably head-nodding beats, mel-
lifluous melodies, perfect “music to chill
to” vibes and show-don’t-tell storytelling
details is pretty uncommon, and suggests
preternatural talent. Parks is not only des-
tined for big things, she’s also perfect for this
moment, when the shuffle button has an-
tiquated the idea of genre boundaries and
endless Spotify playlists have turned music
into background noise for many people. Her
debut, “Collapsed in Sunbeams,” is exactly
that kind of well-crafted neo-soul-pop that’ll
crawl into your head without snapping you
out of your insensibility.
Bartees Strange
“Live Forever”
“Live Forever,” the debut album from
Oklahoma-raised, Washington D.C.-based
singer-songwriter Bartees Strange, feels like
it exists on the other side of the coin from
Continued from previous page
videos and updates at Jackson’s Instagram:
@ mariatheprestigiousbeast.
What are your thoughts on Black History
Month, especially with everything that
happened last year with Black Lives Matter?
I didn’t really learn a lot about Black his-
tory in depth until I was well into my
20s — like 24, 25 I started actually looking into
these things … outside of that strict guideline of,
oh, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King and
these are the only people you really know. It’s a
lot. I had to at some point stop because you learn
so much and you recognize so many things. It
just brought to the forefront a lot of the things I
went through growing up. In Baltimore, it’s not
looked at as the best place. I think things have
calmed down a little bit, hopefully, but they were
wild when I grew up there. It was a lot of vio-
lence, a lot of drug usage, a lot of drug dealers
— that was normal for me, being in that envi-
ronment. And I just didn’t recognize how sys-
temic racism played a part in that because that’s
all I knew, and I just assumed that that’s how life
was for everybody. So I’m really hoping this year
with how everything happened last year, people
really take the time to educate themselves and
really take the time to dig into Black people’s
lives and their history and how all of us have
gotten to the point that we are at right now.
Do you think that Black Lives Matter
coming to the forefront last year has
changed anything?
Q:
A:
Get Your
Someone A Gift
They Will Love!
FEATHERWEIGHT
DOWN JACKET
Available in Mens
& Womens
LES NEWMAN’S
QUALITY OUTDOOR WEAR
On NE Franklin Avenue across from Les Schwab
541-318-4868
Q:
Arlo Parks’ “Collapsed in Sunbeams” (see
blurb above). Each one effortlessly fuses a
handful of different styles, but where Parks
does so seemingly without revealing a seam
or breaking a sweat, Strange’s songs crackle
with an energy that highlights the places
where punk rubs up against hip-hop and
where floaty noise-pop abuts an arena-ready
rock anthem. Both are fine approaches, but
“Live Forever” is positively thrilling as it
bounces from sound to sound. Who else out
there can approximate Kings of Leon one
minute and industrial techno the next? The
answer may or may not be “no one,” but Bar-
tees Strange certainly can, and he can make
you feel something while he’s doing it, too.
e e
Ben Salmon is a Bend-based music journalist and host of
Left Of The Dial, which airs 8-10 p.m. Thursdays on KPOV,
88.9 FM and streams at kpov.org. You can find him on
Bandcamp and Twitter at @bcsalmon.
I do just feel like a lot of the times Black
A:
lives are not really considered important
at all unless it’s a political move. A lot of the
times it’s completely looked over and pushed
under the rug. Most of the people I talk to in
Oregon realistically are white people, and a
lot of them were just like, “Oh, well, you’re just
bringing up politics,” and I just look at them
like, “How are you telling me (that) me talking
about my life and how things happen to peo-
ple who look like me are me trying to bring
up politics, when it’s literally my life?” But
that’s really the only way a lot of people who
aren’t of color will equate Black lives. It needs
to be attached to something, it needs to be at-
tached to organization, it needs to be attached
to politics. I think a lot of people, white people
or non-POC, don’t look at just the individual
and the fact that Black people have hopes and
dreams and things that they want to do and
fears like everybody else. When they’re ex-
pressing that in settings that may happen to be
whiter than others, it’s not because they’re try-
ing to make anybody feel guilty or uncomfort-
able. They are literally just telling you, “This
is what my life is like.” And if that makes you
uncomfortable, good, because hopefully you
can be a catalyst to somebody else and help
dismantle the fact that me bringing up how I
live and how people have responded to me just
being in a space physically, how that’s deemed
uncomfortable.
e e
Reporter: 541-617-7814, bmcelhiney@bendbulletin.com