2020 was going to be The North Country’s year. After the successful release of two singles, Future Humans and Freaks with sold-out release shows in DC and New York and a tour to SXSW coming up, the band was gearing up to share their music and brimming with optimism. Then Covid struck. Just as it did for literally everyone else on planet earth, the rude awakening halted all momentum, forcing the band to cancel their tour, just two days before they were set for their first show.

The North Country was determined to still collaborate and desperate to stave off the monotony of endless Netflix scrolls, the band came up with the idea for the project that would become Born at the Right Time (Exquisite Corpse), a true covid-lockdown record, written and recorded completely collaboratively and completely remotely using only home studio equipment. 

The process was this: each member of the band would write and record a short piece of music and 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.

Their latest single ‘Procrastinator’ taken from  ‘Born at The Right Time’ EP won our hearts with its rawness and honesty. Organic guitar riffs mixed with dreamy synth layers and experimental vocal parts come off as extremely soothing and beautiful with a slight psychedelic side to it. 

We wanted to make something cheeky about the impulsive scrolling that has become muscle memory for so many of us who interact with social media. The best-laid plans are often waylaid by the promise of novelty only a swipe away. The scrolling feed becomes its own piece of media, fragments stitched together determined by our own participation, simultaneously disorienting and hypnotically homogenous.