A vibrating synthesizer, then a slinky drumbeat and cooing vocal. Jangling guitar strings and a tambourine. A wash of cymbals and spacey cascades of notes from guitars. With New Haven and most of the rest of the country on lockdown, and shows local and elsewhere cancelled until further notice, a few holed-up musicians set themselves what under normal circumstances might be near-impossible tasks. Laura Wolf decided to write and record a song a day. Mickey Blurr decided to cover a song a day, playing multiple instruments. And Eggy, with its tour schedule dismantled by Covid-19, recorded a live set as if it was still on the road.
As the notes to Laura Wolf’s Quarantine Demos explain, “all songs were written/ produced/ recorded by me in my parents’ attic while in quarantine.” Her challenge to herself: “complete a song in some form each day.” As she wrote about halfway through the process on social media, “so far this has been a wild experience in speedy writing/ production, mixing, one shot recording, and letting go.”
Quarantine Demos hums with the immediacy with which it was created. “Love in the Time of Quarantine” shifts from texture to texture over its hip-swiveling, while “Paravane” revels in a frantic glitchiness. “Passing the Time” is built on a scintillating mixture of electronics and cello that moves over a slow, almost pastoral pulse. “Light Leaks” gets more sparse, but one can almost sense Wolf having settled into a common language for her week-long experiment; the dozens of ideas are coalescing around a central sound. “After the Crash” marks the album’s quietest moment, and yet it’s still never still. “When We Go Outside” ends the album on a note of defiant hope, looking already toward the pandemic’s end. It’s easy to understand how this song became the project’s last; within the first week, burning through ideas, Wolf came up with a complete statement.
Mickey Blurr’s Quarantine Covers is less about confronting the pandemic and more about grabbing the chance to still make music even without a band around. “All instruments & vocals performed by Mickey,” the accompanying notes inform us; “used thus far: electric & acoustic guitar, bass, tambourine, shakers, wood blocks, hand drum, electric drums/drum pad, piano, synths.” The results, especially given the speed of production, are quite impressive, as Blurr by himself captures much of the sound of the originals, whether it’s the jangly acoustic guitar-driven “Unsatisfied” from the Replacements, or the grinding, lonely distortion on Joy Division’s “New Dawn Fades.”
Perhaps most telling is the choice of songs. While each of the acts Blurr covers is famous, Blurr has gone for the artists’ deeper cuts, whether it’s Prince’s playfully scandalous “Darling Nikki” or David Bowie’s “Breaking Glass.” It’s the sound of a musician staying amused, and entertaining his fans in the process.
If Wolf is always looking out the window and Blurr is turning inward, you might say New Haven-based jam band Eggy is doing a little bit of both with Live From Out There. In the past couple years, as Eggy’s gig schedule has taken the band farther and farther afield from New Haven, the outfit has been releasing recordings of live sets from various tour stops, whether it’s towns all over Connecticut, Boston, New York, or Florida. Eggy had a tour much farther afield planned for the spring. With the Covid-19 outbreak upending those plans, Eggy hit social media quickly and began a series of live streamed sets that the band members called the “Quarantour,” even printing up t‑shirts for the occasion. In keeping with the band’s tradition, Eggy also released this album, in anticipation of its latest single, “Northern Lights,” which came out on April 9.
“We are grateful in these times to have a band house (the egg carton) and continue to create, but there’s absolutely nothing like being in the same room as all of you and feeling that exchange in energy that keeps this whole thing alive,” the band said on its Facebook page recently. “It’s fair to say we’re really missing our fam. In the meantime, lookout for livestreams and more music coming your way.” At the rate New Haven’s bands are currently going in producing new material, we’ll all be hearing a lot of new songs live when all this is over, and the clubs open up again.
Laura Wolf’s, Mickey Blurr’s, and Eggy’s quarantine recordings can all be found on Bandcamp.
