Released without warning at the start of October 2020,
Stay Alive
is undoubtedly a COVID-19 quarantine album, a record whose very existence is due to an artist coping with enforced isolation. Weary of countless internet video calls,
Laura Jane Grace
sifted through her backlog of unrecorded songs, wrote a couple new ones, then headed into Electrical Audio with its founder
Steve Albini
to knock out these tunes quickly. The resulting
is an electrical jolt, a record that gallops along at a breakneck pace, benefitting from its swift creation and
Grace
's existential fear and dread. The desperation in her voice is accentuated by her close-fisted strums on (usually) an acoustic guitar, a combination that underscores how this is music made of and for isolation. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine