Far
Bartees Strange poses an interesting question with his solo debut. What if the idea of genres limits expression? It s a question born out of his extremely broad musical evolution: growing up going to opera camp; playing in punk rock bands as a teenager; working as a hip-hop producer; and now, finding a way to fuse them with his love of indie rock as a solo artist. The result is
Live Forever, an album that finds room for plenty of different sounds and tells the story of his life along the way.
Part of what helped push Bartees Strange into the spotlight before his latest record was an EP he made covering one of his favorite bands, The National. He was drawn to making it after realizing he was one of very few Black fans in the audience at a National show in Washington, D.C. We ll talk about that, and more of his thoughts on race and rock and roll.