Words: Ellie Ward
As coronavirus and lockdown held the nation at ransom, and the music industry fell silent in terms of live shows, artists everywhere began to take up their artistic pursuits in their box rooms producing Instagram livestreams and remotely recorded new songs.
Out of this has also come Empty Days Club.
Formed of members from Catholic Action, Diving Station, Golden Age Of TV, The How & The Hum, Marsicans, Sea Legs, Talkboy, and the Empty Days Club House Band (a collection of musicians from Leeds), most of the musicians are still yet to meet in person, yet have managed to create a collection titled 'Empty Days Club: Volume 1' to be released on September 2, and available for digital download via Bandcamp from August 7 2020, to coincide with the Bandcamp Friday initiative.
“Empty Days Club is our attempt to fill your days with something unexpected," says Calum from Talkboy. "Judging from the bum prints on our sofas, we’d become a bit too comfortable with what’s going on - we’re fortunate in that our main challenge is fighting the boredom of lockdown. With that in mind, it felt exciting to try something out of our comfort zones. In a six-piece band, it can sometimes feel like too many cooks so we thought we’d double down by bringing even more people to the table!”
Empty Days Club will be donating all profits from sales of the EP to the NHS in support of helping the doctors and nurses get access to the relevant PPE they need whilst battling Covid-19.
“This compilation is for charity, but it shouldn't need to be. It's important to remember that the NHS is NOT a charity like the tories would like you to believe," adds Chris from Catholic Action. "It's a government service. And the reason why we're struggling to cope in the UK is very simple - the NHS has been very deliberately chronically underfunded over the past 10 years of tory rule under the guise of austerity, with their eventual aim of privatisation.
"The narrative is as follows: they continually cut funding, the public eventually lose faith in a failing service, and then happily sign up to it being sold off. This is happening right now, and we need to fight against it every way we can. You can start by engaging in open dialogue. Get our of your echo chamber and convince your nearest tory voter to tick a different box next time."
Listen to 'One More Thing To Do' and 'Fan Fiction' from the EP below.
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