More about: Empty Days Club

Introducing the Empty Days Club EP. Born in lockdown and raising money for our NHS, this special release has been created by members of Catholic Action, Marsicans, Talkboy, Golden Age of TV and many more. 

Featuring all original material composed during lockdown, this indie supergroup have also pledged to donate all of the profits from the release to the NHS. 

Detailing the EP, Calum from Talkboy says: “Empty Days Club is our attempt to fill your days with something unexpected. 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!”

Find out more about the release, track by track, below:

Marsicans / Talkboy - ‘One More Thing To Do’

James Newbigging, Marsicans: ‘One More Thing To Do’ started one morning during lockdown where I'd done all my jobs for the day by 11am. I opened my email to find the track from Talkboy and immediately felt the vibe of the song. I was basically dancing round my kitchen to the song making a vegetable soup, and it all happened within about half an hour or so. It was a snapshot into a bored morning I was having (one of many). I was trying to get across how everyone seemed to be yearning for something/ anything to occupy their mind, despite living in a time where it was extremely hard to concentrate on anything. 

Talkboy / Golden Age of TV - ‘Fan Fiction’ 

Katie Heap, Talkboy: ‘Fan Fiction’ is about media skepticism and post-truth culture - the distrust we have towards the media and those in power due to the mixed messages we receive and the ever growing trend that truth is no longer a priority. It can lead to a total indifference to what is going on around us because we can no longer trust the things we’re being told.

Empty Days Club House Band / Talkboy - ‘Parasite’ 

Tom Sargent, Talkboy: ‘Parasite' is an emotional piece, written of a misty relationship you thought was the real thing, and then the reality hits to uncover the toxicity that was right in front of you. Lyrics were written and sung by Rebecca Dunn (Cecelia) and Will Blundell (Døorman). Overall, the concept was to have a piece that represents a point that most people have been through and experienced in their lives. It was with that though that the idea contains minimal to sudden movement that holds a lot of weight. Conjuring a mixed bag of references and genres together, including the influences of Radiohead, Bon Iver, King Krule and more, the original concept and idea was born from Talkboy bassist, Tom Sargent, and features a long list of incredible musicians and friends of the band stretching mixed genres. 

Also featuring on this piece are self titled artists; Calvin Trevers, Daniel Brunskill and Kieran O'Malley, Joshua Smout, Patrick Martin, Stuart Wilson of All Caps, and KOYOs very own, Jacob Price.

Howl & The Hum / Talkboy - ‘Saccharine Days’ 

Sam Griffiths, Howl & The Hum: ‘Saccharine Days’ was one of the first full lyrics I wrote during lockdown, I guess expecting us to lose our summer, and then getting dizzyingly nostalgic for seeing my mates in real life. Recently I've been realising that lockdown and solitude made me not just pine for other people, but groups of people: to be en masse, part of a community again, is what I still miss. The music that the guys had written had those slightly melancholic major 7th chords, which always remind me of Neil Young songs: a sad universality, so I wrote the lyric off the back of that.

Diving Station - ‘Suckling’

Anna, Diving Station: ‘Suckling’ was a bit of a challenge for me as I have never written on top of something so finished and complete. The guys had done such a good job of creating something with a real unique flavour and I wanted to tap into that. I took it as a chance to explore a new way of listening and tried to gauge what I thought might be the inspiration for the track. To me it was Manga and video games - taking me to a neon white and pink store front in Tokyo. I wanted to put this into a repetitive hook that would be evocative yet easy to learn and latch onto. Sweet, saccharine, suckling - those words should linger on your tongue a little too long. 

Catholic Action / Talkboy - ‘Oh Come On’ 

Chris McCrory, Catholic Action: At the height of lockdown I spent a lot of time reading and thinking about what it is I’m actually doing with my life. Is what I am doing constructive or beneficial to me? Am I just doing what I think I should be doing or what I actually want to do? I think before lockdown, I was just spending a lot of my life in a flurry of mostly empty, unfulfilling activity. When Talkboy sent me the stems, it was the book titles on my shelf that sparked the thoughts that became ‘Oh Come On’.

Empty Days Club is out now via Bandcamp, with all profits from the project will being donated to the NHS.

More about: Empty Days Club