Slow Coming Day made their return to music last year, after a decade and a half, with an album called 1,000 Years (Like A Day). It wasn't clear if this was an ongoing return or a one-time deal, but when the world went into lockdown, they, like many artists, decided to use the quarantine time to make more music.

Simply titled Quarantine Sessions, 2020 sees Orion Walsh and company move away from the vaguely-electronic sound established last year into an acoustic sound that I personally think works better for them. A few of the songs are acoustic renditions of older Slow Coming Day songs - "Watching L.A. Fall Apart," "Mid-Quarantine Nightmare," and "A Part of Me Died" are all from their Tooth & Nail album, Farewell to the Familiar (though the original titles of those first two are "Watching It Fall Apart" and "A Midsummer's Nightmare"). The rest, however, were quarantine-borne, and for the most part, it's solid material. Naturally, as one might expect, the overarching theme is loneliness and isolation. While "Ghost Town, USA" is more blatantly about the Covid-19 situation, songs like "Loneliness Settles In" and "A Mere Accident" just feel and sound a lot more pensive.

Slow Coming Day's Quarantine Sessions is a lot more like an Orion Walsh solo album than a full-band album. The acoustic guitar is the prominent instrument, with bits and pieces of other instruments sprinkled throughout. If you were hoping for more Farewell to the Familiar/, this isn't exactly it. But it is a solid installment in the SCD catalog.

- Review date: 7/2/20, written by Scott Fryberger of Jesusfreakhideout.com