For those longing for Joni Mitchell tracks and mourning the loss of the late, great, Leonard Cohen, welcome Electra Day into your music library.
Electra Day is the solo project from Julie Hampton, a former teacher, poet and world traveler. In August of this year, Electra Day released “Quiet Hours,” a nine-track collection of songs representing her travels over an eleven year time span. With her stops including states throughout the mid-west United States, to The Mojave Desert, to an extensive time spent living in Berlin, the album reflects lessons learned and an exciting life lived along the way.
Electra studied English literature in college and continued to write poetry until turning to the music world. While living in Berlin, she learned guitar and started composing the songs that eventually became a part of The Quiet Hours. Each song is only Electra’s voice and the gentle strumming of her guitar, keeping them very minimal and similar in tone. If listened to all at once, the album sounds like one long poem, as Electra shares the stories of her adventures. The songs do remind me of travelling, particularly of cloudy, rainy days spent looking out the window on a train.
Electra plans to release the second collection of her songs sometime next year, which will reflect her travels but in a different tone. With the many places she has been, she has a wealth of influences to pull from. In the meantime, anyone with a love of literature and travelling, will find listening to The Quiet Hours an easy and enjoyable experience. I plan to reserve it for the days that lay before us in the winter ahead, as the leaves begin to fall off of the trees and the temperature drifts down and everything else becomes quiet.
To learn more about Electra Day and her upcoming musical adventures, visit her website. Listen to the first release, “Big Sky” below.
