Bandcampin’: Good stuff for your ears

Published 11:15 am Wednesday, December 29, 2021

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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.

Split Single, “Amplificado”

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Jason Narducy is best known as a sideman to the indie rock stars: He has regular gigs playing bass in Superchunk and Bob Mould’s band, and has done the same for big names like Eddie Vedder and Liz Phair. But his solo project is Split Single, which has released three albums of melodic, meat-and-potatoes rock ‘n’ roll over the past decade. The best of the three is this year’s “Amplificado,” a collection of earworms anchored by a killer rhythm section: Superchunk drummer Jon Wurster and R.E.M. bassist Mike Mills. To put it simply: This thing rocks!

Channelers, “Another Entrance”

It’s been a rough year. The longer this pandemic stretches on — and the more I worry about the future of our country, how climate change will affect my kids, and when my favorite burrito shop will have lengua again — the more I find myself taking comfort in gentle, pretty instrumental music. Channelers fits the bill perfectly. It’s a project helmed by a guy named Sean Conrad, who also runs the excellent Inner Islands record label. “These sounds,” he says, “are me trying to find my own personal devotional music.” Beautiful and meditative, I bet it’ll work for you, too.

Makthaverskan, “För Allting”

Gothenburg, Sweden is not a particularly large city — a half-million to a million-ish people, depending on where you draw the lines — but boy has it turned out a lot of great music over the years: Jose Gonzalez. At the Gates. Little Dragon. Jens Lekman. The Knife. Anna von Hausswolff. Ace of Base. Add to that list Makthaverskan, five former schoolmates who expertly walk the line between brooding post-punk and effervescent pop music, with a healthy dose of shoegaze atmosphere hovering over everything. They call it “dream-pop for realists,” and they’re right.

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