Come visit Room 822
An album recorded in a hotel room in Covid quarantine, reimagining some great Australian artists.
It’s Australia Day as I’m writing this, which seems as good a use of this national holiday as any. Mercifully Covid means there’s none of the usual flag waving ceremonies associated with a day that an increasing number of Australians feel deeply unhappy about.
It’s also a day I feel deeply unqualified to talk about. I don’t profess to speak for anyone but myself, but to me it just makes sense to celebrate the country we are, with all our flaws and blessings, on a day that we can all enjoy, not a day that divides us. If someone tells you what you’re doing hurts them, you should stop. Come on Australia.
So with a day off and in no mood to celebrate, I took to the garden and the beach. And then I headed to Room 822.
It seems fitting that today’s soundtrack would be an album recorded in a hotel room in Covid quarantine, reimagining some great Australian artists.
Emily Barker, an Australian musician based in London and her husband Lukas Drinkwater, flew home to visit Emily’s family at the height of Covid, braving the fortnight quarantine. “We thought a good way to kill the hours would be to set ourselves a goal. Lukas suggested recording an album,” Emily said on bandcamp.
With bags crammed with recording gear and lugging their guitars and a folding double bass, the pair hunkered down for 14 days in Room 822 at the Westin Hotel in Perth.
It’s not hard to picture them set up in a hotel room, trying to keep quiet so as not to disturb their fellow quarantiners. Stripped back, acoustic, the recordings worked around the hum of the bar fridge and the city sirens and traffic outside the window.
The album kicks off with Nick Cave’s “Push the Sky Away” and wanders through an eclectic mix of artists, from The Church to Silverchair, Stella Donnelly to Deborah Conway, like listening to someone’s private and very quiet mix tape.
The best covers reveal something new about a song you thought you already knew. A melodic fragility for Nick Cave that was buried in the original. A reminder of the sadness and lyrical deftness of Deborah Conway’s “Will You Miss Me When You’re Sober”. Melancholy replacing the shimmer and shine of the original "Under the Milky Way". “Boys Will Be Boys”, hauntingly beautiful with Emily’s voice soaring above sparse piano and a double bass, is just as jaw dropping as the first time I heard it, and sadly still too relevant.
Room 822 whispers for you to come closer. It beckons you in. It holds you gently like a dear friend who has been distant for way too long.
A new version of an old song gives you a chance to reflect, reminisce, re-evaluate. It might even change your mind about a song you loved or hated. And that's a good thing. Perhaps it's time we had a new version of Australia Day.
