PREMIERE: Washington D.C. Experimental Art-Pop Act The North Country Share Title Track From Upcoming Album ‘Born At The Right Time’

The story of having plans destroyed in 2020 is a universal one, and one told a thousand times since March of that year. And while it is a common theme for many, especially artists, the more interesting narrative comes from their ability to adapt.

For Washington D.C. experimental art-pop group The North Country, they found a way to transfer their shifted momentum into a unique recording process for their upcoming album Born At The Right Time (Exquisite Corpse). Recorded using home studio equipment, the album is a true lockdown record.

The process was this: each member of the band would write and record a short piece of music then send it to one other person in the band. Then they would work on it, adding to it for one week and then pass it along to one other person in the band. Using a 6×6 matrix of non-repeating numbers in rows and columns they set up a schedule so that each piece of music was passed to a new person in the band, in a unique order, and each person sent to and received from someone new each week. Nobody heard the whole thing until the very end. 

The rules were simple: One or two ideas added per round. Ideas can be instrumental, structural, lyrical. Don’t be afraid to get weird.

“Part of the fun of this whole project was experimenting with working within a tight schedule, forcing us (and particularly me) not to overthink things”, explains vocalist Andrew Grossman. “Just do it quick and pass it along. For me, this meant taking on the Allen Ginsberg mantra of “first thought, best thought” when writing lyrics. I even dropped the line in the song. I’m not really sure what the words means, but I can tell you for sure it felt right to say ‘em when I wrote ‘em.”

With the record ready to go, the band have shared its lead single & title track “Born At The Right Time”. Wonderfully rhythmic and slow-burning, the song finds its strengths in the sonic details, from quiet breathing to crisp percussive textures. Its haunting guitar riff mirrors Grossman’s soothing vocals as the group sing about uncertainty and life with a cinematic musicality.

The North Country will be releasing their new album Born At the Right Time (Exquisite Corpse) on July 15th. Pre-order it here. The band will be playing a handful of shows this month as well (dates at the bottom).

Listen to the single below, and read through the latest Q&A just past.

The band’s Andrew Grossman (vocals, guitar, synthesizer), Laurel Halsey (vocals, keys), and Jon Harmon (guitar, electronics) discuss their latest project in the new Q&A below:

What was something you weren’t expecting to appreciate or enjoy about the new recording process? 

AG: I wasn’t expecting to have enjoyed having deadlines as much as I did. Under normal circumstances I would sit and ponder the recorded parts endlessly. Having only a week to work on any one particular thing was really liberating.

 LH: I used a $13 USB microphone and a pop filter I made out of a wire coat hanger and some old stockings when I recorded my vocals. I was surprised they sounded decent. It was also just an absolute delight to hear what everyone had come up with at the end. It was sort of like playing a very creatively demanding game of Telephone.

What inspired the pass-it-along method when writing? 

AG: We were all in our houses during lockdown going stir crazy and had a band zoom meeting to try and figure out how to continue to be a band when we could even be in the same room together and our bassist Austin suggested it totally offhand and everyone kind of looked at each other and went, “Well, shit! That’s not a bad idea!”

LH: It was originally meant to be just a creative exercise to keep our songwriting juices flowing. We had no idea we would eventually decide to get the tracks property mixed and mastered and then release them. Then, at the end, when we heard how cool the tracks sounded, we realized we had to do more with them than just let the files sit on our computers.

Were there any challenges with it that you had to overcome?

AG: Let’s just say some band members are better at sticking to the deadlines than others.

LH: True, but I think having deadlines at all, even if not everyone always met them perfectly, still pushed the project along more than if we hadn’t imposed any parameters on ourselves.

What is “Born At The Right Time” about? 

JH: For me, Born At The Right Time is about uncertainty. When I think of the guitar part that I wrote as the seed of the song, you have these chords that hang in the air but also don’t always land when you expect them. So while they do resolve in the musical sense, it’s a beat ahead or a beat after you expect it. Kind of like waiting for your foot to land on a dark staircase. The lyrics to me are about COVID and this feeling of uncertainty around when is this over, is this just the way life is from now on. There’s also a part I included that’s a looping drone that kind of builds a low level anxiety for most of the song. Ultimately it ends optimistically but not necessarily in the sense that all those questions were answered but more in the sense that you’re less attached to knowing the answer, and choosing to live in the present. 

In the spirit of not overthinking, what is the first word that comes to your mind to describe Born At The Right Time EP? 

AG: Exquisite!

LH: Kaleidoscopic 

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Tour dates

May 19 – Philadelphia @ The Pharmacy

May 20 – Washington, DC @ Comet Ping Pong

May 21- Norfolk, VA @ Chichos Backstage

May 22 – Charlottesville, VA @ Champion Brewery

Track list:

1. Snowday
2. Procrastinator
3. Born At The Right Time
4. Inside Outside
5. Lucky Unlucky
6. Learn To Love The Pain