Camp Bedford’s “So Often & So Sweet” Is So Promising

So Often & So Sweet/EP Art

Brooklyn-based trio Camp Bedford — Roxanne Quilty and Mariela Flor Olivo, on guitars and lead vocals and Tallen Gabriel on cello – have released their debut EP, So Often & So Sweet, which features three tracks- “2AM”, “Tonight” and “Jupiter”.

“I’m not saying that I miss you, I’m saying it’s not fair” is the core sentiment of “2 AM,” which speaks to the frustration and unanswered questions that accompany a breakup with lines such as, “she’ll fall in love with the side of you I never got to meet.”

Camp Bedford On The Sultan Room Stage /photo by Zaffira Medici

The poignant “Tonight” is a straight-forward song of remembrance and yearning for a lost love, even if for just one more night: “I want back the piece of me I had to leave behind,” wails the lover who know she will “romanticize the features of your face for decades.”

Camp Bedford / photo by Yekaterina Gyadu

The soaring “Jupiter” is perhaps the most musically complex and poetic of the three songs. It ends almost abruptly with the line, “Time is up, you’ve had enough of my precious energy.” To that we say we want to spend more time listening to Camp Bedford’s “precious energy” – and did just that last month.

Those three songs formed the backbone of the multitalented trio’s well-attended, enthusiastically received EP-release show at The Sultan Room on March 31. Other highlights included “Our America,” something of an alternative national anthem, and “Blue” (a band original, not the Joni Mitchell song) for which they were joined vocally by another Brooklynite, Halsey Philip Harkins of opening act Pip the Band. Throughout the set the trio was accompanied by two other Brooklyn artists: Kailey Prior on bass and Julian Giaimo, who produced the EP, on drums.

Having heard Olivo – Brooklyn Roads’ April 2020 “Artists On Our Radar” – play her heartbreaking “Please Stay” solo on several occasions, it was a treat to hear it getting the full-band treatment, with Olivo and Quilty sharing the vocals. And enough cannot be said for the unique and brilliant touches that Gabriel’s phenomenal cello playing brought to the table.