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Quarantainment: Esh & The Isolations face our grim reality on ‘Lou Says’

Editor’s Note: Welcome to Quarantainment, Vanyaland’s new series on what to watch, what to hear, and how to deal as the world engages in social distancing to combat the spread of coronavirus, or COVID-19. We’re all at home, we’re all online, and we’re all in this together. #StayTheFHome


This age of quarantine has enabled all the days to blend in to one another, and the only thing that feels like a noted passage of time is the first of a new month. We’ve survived April’s introduction, and now we gaze our eyes to May 1. That also happens to be the day Boston’s Esh & The Isolations roll out a new LP titled Idiot Fingerz.

The first offering from the album, “Lou Says”, hit, coincidentally enough, on April 1, and it’s a brooding fit of rumination that blends Esh’s life-dyed bars over a slow-build low-end rumble. It’s classic Esh, as any feelings of hope are swept aside by the grip of the real world around us.

“The song is a reflection on identity inspired by the late great Lou Reed of the Velvet Underground,” Esh tells Vanyaland. “The video is a nod to the Max Headroom incident — a mysterious pirated television broadcast that aired on CBS in 1987.”

Only someone like Esh could meld together Reed and Headroom, and the result is something as dark and precise as the times that are currently imprisoning us. Hit play on the YouTube link and count down to May 1. If we get there.