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Watch Scarlet Parke scale a sand dune in new teaser for “Nowhere To Go”

Release date: October 25th, 2019

Dan Ray October 10, 20191 Comment
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Watch Scarlet Parke scale a sand dune in new teaser for “Nowhere To Go” October 10, 20191 Comment

Raised by a single mother in the suburbs of Detroit, Dan discovered an early passion for singing, songwriting, and the arts as a whole. She got her BA in English and music at the University of Michigan, where she reported for the school’s paper, The Michigan Daily. She worked as a Senior News Reporter on the government beat, transitioned to arts writing, and eventually became the managing editor of the social media department. She moved to Seattle in 2017. After losing her job during the COVID-19 pandemic and discouraged about the lack of press surrounding Seattle’s music scene, Dan made the decision to turn Dan’s Tunes, a fully fledged music journalism website focused on showcasing the Seattle area’s musicians, into its own startup. There’s so much music happening in the city that spawned Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Jimi Hendrix — among others — and Dan’s Tunes is determined to find and expose those outstanding acts. The goal is to have satellites in every major US city, uplifting diverse and compelling voices and helping music communities thrive. In 2020, Dan was featured in the Seattle Times’s year-end music critic poll. Other than her musical endeavors (singing, playing ukulele, and auditioning for American Idol four times before the age of 24) Ray is passionate about food and education around the American food system, and she’s also a large proponent of eliminating the stigma around mental health. Ray loves cats, especially her own, who is named Macaulay Culkin (but she’s a lady).

Photo courtesy of Scarlet Parke

Scarlet Parke is an artist who isn’t afraid to tell it like it is. From the opening track of her June 2019 album Flight Risk, “Anxious,” which addresses social anxiety in all its forms, from friends to lovers to the mass media, to her set at August’s Splash Fest, where she preached self-acceptance, growth, and that it’s okay to be crazy sometimes, Parke has a knack for hitting on deep-seated, universal issues by way of catchy pop/r&b riffs. Now, only four months off Flight Risk‘s release, Parke is back with another track dripping with cooly confident apprehension, “Nowhere To Go.”

In the teaser for the track, we follow Parke as she walks up to the top of a sand dune, each foot purposefully placed. As she begins to chime, “here there are no walls, doors, or limits. No maps or guides, just thoughts and time,” the camera pans up from a straight shot of the dune so that Parke slowly comes into frame — first just her feet, and, slowly, the rest of her body, the camera following her from behind.

Parke continues: “the place that knows…every move you’ve ever made, yet nothing ever looks the same. Here you are and will remain. For no one ever leaves their brain.” As the wind whips beneath her monologue, you get the sense that you’re watching Parke roam around her own mind, a vast wasteland with nothing but sand in sight. Yet, wearing high-calf white boots, a flowing dark-green throw, and her signature waist-length braided ponytail, Parke doesn’t seem lost in her head — despite the existentially haunting narration — but more like an Amazon warrior, not knowing where she is going, but trusting that she can pave her way through any situation.

In keeping with the tune she set on Flight Risk, “Nowhere To Go” itself is sweetly flowing electronic pop/r&b track, true to Parke’s sound. On the chorus, she laments, “I just wanna leave my mind / but there’s nowhere to go / nowhere to go but here.” She takes the themes of “Anxious” to new heights, bringing her listener into the abyss we all have swirling inside of us that is solely composed of uncertainty and fear of judgement.

Yet, with Parke’s steady, calm delivery throughout the track, she turns what could have been a hectic track about panic and woe into a piece of art that reassures the listener that they aren’t alone. By bringing her fears out into the open, Parke morphs them from insurmountable, omnipotent forces into tangible opponents that we can all band together against. You’re not omnipotent, Parke seems to say, I am. We are. And we will find our way out of these seemingly endless waves of sand.

Check out the teaser below, and stay tuned for the full track, due out October 25th.

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Raised by a single mother in the suburbs of Detroit, Dan discovered an early passion for singing, songwriting, and the arts as a whole. She got her BA in English and music at the University of Michigan, where she reported for the school’s paper, The Michigan Daily. She worked as a Senior News Reporter on the government beat, transitioned to arts writing, and eventually became the managing editor of the social media department. She moved to Seattle in 2017. After losing her job during the COVID-19 pandemic and discouraged about the lack of press surrounding Seattle’s music scene, Dan made the decision to turn Dan’s Tunes, a fully fledged music journalism website focused on showcasing the Seattle area’s musicians, into its own startup. There’s so much music happening in the city that spawned Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Jimi Hendrix — among others — and Dan’s Tunes is determined to find and expose those outstanding acts. The goal is to have satellites in every major US city, uplifting diverse and compelling voices and helping music communities thrive. In 2020, Dan was featured in the Seattle Times’s year-end music critic poll. Other than her musical endeavors (singing, playing ukulele, and auditioning for American Idol four times before the age of 24) Ray is passionate about food and education around the American food system, and she’s also a large proponent of eliminating the stigma around mental health. Ray loves cats, especially her own, who is named Macaulay Culkin (but she’s a lady).