The easiest way to enjoy Touching: the Isolation Blues digital album download

From Exclaim!:

The debut album by Michael Falk’s new project Touching comes intentionally during the time of the coronavirus. Recognizing the suddenly hyper-relevant themes of these songs, Falk fast-tracked their completion and released them in weekly video instalments — in collaboration with cinematographer Tyler Funk and actor Ali Tataryn — beginning just after the COVID-19 pandemic first took hold in Canada. (Falk has also donated half of the proceeds to the Unison Benevolent Fund to help other musicians. “It would feel weird to show up in the world again without also trying to help out peers who have lost so much,” he said.)

As you’d expect, Isolation Blues revolves around feelings of anxiety, loneliness and darkness. “My world is on its knees,” Falk sings in “Hold On,” an apocalyptic-sounding song released as the world reels from catastrophe. There’s also “The Darkness,” which contains verses that remark upon the difficulties of identifying and treating the causes of illness. The tracklist itself reads as a greatest hits of pandemic moods. No wonder Falk felt that a global lockdown was as good of a time as any to put this album out into the world.