With an acoustic guitar balanced on his lap, Jason Altshuler, bassist of the New Haven-based band Toil!, strums a chord progression on the back porch of his West Tisbury home. The voices of Mr. Altshuler’s three bandmates and Yale classmates, Dani Zanuttini-Frank, Luca Scoppetta-Stern and Cameron Berg, join him, weaving harmonies of You Lost Me Blue — a wistful ballad from the group’s latest EP.
The new album, which is currently unnamed, has been a pandemic project for the band, which spent last week recording tracks in Mr. Altshuler’s Island home.
“We were planning to get together and we thought, why don’t we just bring all our equipment and see if something happens,” said Mr. Altshuler.
On a crisp Sunday morning, the band reflected on their recent work on the Vineyard and the musical journey that led them to it.
The group, made up of four current Yale juniors, formed on a whim. The bandmates, who met early freshman year through class and campus musical groups, began playing together in each other’s dorms, and soon Toil! was born.
“It was immediately clear that we were all going to be really good friends and I think before I even left my dorm room, I was like we have to form a band,” said Mr. Altshuler.
At school, the band is known for performing at parties, as well as off-campus gigs at local New Haven bars.
Toil!’s sound, which blends an array of genres from folk to rock, is hard to pin down, the band agreed.
Mr. Zanuttini-Frank, the band’s guitarist, brings classical influences to the mix, Mr. Berg brings his skills on a compact, portable drum called a cajon, while Mr. Altshuler and Mr. Scoppetta-Stern, who plays keys and sings vocals, add a folk and jazz spin to the tracks.
“There are genres we all listen to and like to play and then we all have certain things that we bring to the table,” explained Mr. Altshuler. “There’s definitely like a lot of rock and a lot of R&B and soul vocabulary, but it all comes together in different ratios for each song.”
The group’s first EP, called Night out with Toil!, is a rock album, inspired by the band’s live performances. The EP was recorded last year, but wasn’t released until this November, due to the pandemic, they said.
The recent project, however, is made up of simpler tracks recorded out of a makeshift studio in Mr. Altshuler’s home.
“It has decidedly a different sound,” said Mr. Scoppetta-Stern, who writes most of the band’s original songs along with Mr. Altshuler.
Mr. Altshuler agreed.
“I think there were a lot of steps with the first EP to make it sound the way that we had in our head as these fully formed rock songs,” he said. “This is a lot more just capturing a moment of us playing. It’s generally more intimate, more stripped down.”
The Island had also been an important part of the recipe, they said.
“It feels very appropriate for the times because we’re sort of removing ourselves from the world to go into the woods and onto the Island,” said Mr. Zanuttini-Frank.
Gesturing toward the backyard, Mr. Altshuler added: “It’s a peaceful place and I think there’s a lot of peace to the EP.”
The week-long recording session has been meaningful for the group, who haven’t seen one another since the pandemic began as three band members are currently taking leaves of absence from college.
“There are some songs we’ve never played together as a group before,” said Mr. Zanuttini-Frank. “We’ve all changed as players since we played nine months ago because we’ve all been sitting there playing instruments 24 hours a day with nothing else going on.”
By Sunday, the band had finished up the lion’s share of the project, with only vocals left to record before leaving the Island. Mixing and mastering the tracks will be the band’s next steps, but for the moment rushing the release is not the focus, the group agreed.
“I know I’m going to be less concerned about making sure each note is in the exact right place,” said Mr. Altshuler. “This is like a tape of us playing and if it sounds clean and it’s recorded nicely, we’ll send it to our friends and family and put it on the internet and hope people like it.”
Though plans for next semester remain uncertain, the group is looking forward to playing live again.
”The first day we can all get the vaccine, we’ll be playing,” Mr. Zanuttini-Frank said with a laugh.
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