Bandcampin’
Published 1:30 am Thursday, July 16, 2020
- Yellow Swans.jpg
Bandcamp 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.
Margo Price
Trending
“That’s How Rumors Get Started” margoprice.bandcamp.com/album/thats-how-rumors-get-started
Nashville outsider Margo Price is on quite a hot streak. After working for years in the Music City meat grinder and gaining very little traction, the outspoken singer-songwriter broke through in 2016 with her excellent debut album “Midwest Farmer’s Daughter,” and she cemented her status as an indie star with her 2017 sophomore effort “All American Made.” Where those two showcased her fiery honky-tonk side, her third album, “That’s How Rumors Get Started,” finds Price expanding her sound and exploring a more 1970s-flavored mix of folk, pop, blues and classic rock. She does it all with an uncommon combo of grace and grit.
Hum
“Inlet” humband.bandcamp.com/album/inlet
Way back in the 1990s, Hum was one of the underground’s best bands that never really broke big, for whatever reason. While groups like Dinosaur Jr and Built to Spill and Sonic Youth earned MTV airplay and/or larger audiences, Hum generated a bit of buzz on the backs of four excellent albums of heavy, melodic alt-rock, but seemed to peter out after 1998’s “Downward is Heavenward” failed to bump ‘em up a notch. As a result, the band’s fans and ‘90s nostalgists spent the past couple of decades wishing for a resurgence. And then, on June 23, they got it when the band surprise-released its first album in 22 years on Bandcamp. Even better? It’s terrific. “Inlet” is proof that despite the layoff, these Champaign, Illinois, fuzz-masters haven’t lost a step.
Yellow Swans
Trending
“Going Places” yellowswans.bandcamp.com/album/going-places
The other night, someone started uploading music from revered Portland experimental/noise duo Yellow Swans to Bandcamp. This was a very exciting development for folks who (A) are old enough to remember the 2000s, and (B) like listening to music that sounds the inside of a vacuum cleaner or metal things scraping together or bubbling cosmic afterbirth or all of those things at the same time. Helmed by Pete Swanson and Gabriel Saloman, Yellow Swans released a disorienting number of CDs, cassette tapes, vinyl 7-inches and LPs during their existence, often in small quantities, which means they’re impossible to find now. On Twitter, Swanson promised an extensive effort to get Swans’ material up on Bandcamp over the next however long, which means this particular corner of the site is going to be a treasure trove of weirdo sounds worth watching for a while.