Daytime Lover will offer up an eight-song debut release with a show at The DLC on March 4, with an album slated to arrive on all major-and-minor streaming services earlier in the day. The lovely title track, "I Was Asleep," has already been in the world for a week-and-change, a perfect teaser to the larger whole.

In more than a few respects, this album will allow the group to document their first era of roughly three years together, a period that saw the then-seven-month-old group nearly nipped in the bud by Covid. Jobs were put on hold. Ditto, rehearsals. Songs from the guitar and voice of primary songwriter Moriah Glazier even went on hiatus for a time. And each of the group's members dodged illness, if not ennui. Throughout, they maintained a hope that their early momentum would come back whole.

Guitarist Emma Roberts (a former City Weekly editorial intern) says that "it was very depressing at first. At the start of the pandemic, we had all these shows lined up. We had to cancel a bunch of gigs, couldn't really practice. We were really trying to be safe. It put a damper on morale, and it was hard to be creative at that time, not seeing my bandmates, being stuck at home."

The group originally gelled around an interesting notion, in that Glazier had been a singer/songwriter with the hopes of putting together a group to support the "skeletons" of songs that she'd been writing, i.e. lyrics with guitar starts. To accomplish this, she called on Roberts (also of the band Herring), whom she'd met through church bands at age 13, though they were only "adjacent friends" at that earlier point. They wanted to round out the group with an idea of kinship first, wanting the personal connection to override almost everything else, including skill on specific instruments.

Nora Price (also of Sculpture Club, Red Bennies, Jazz Jagz and Durian Durian) came in on bass, while Jared Asplund (also of Martian Cult) became the group's drummer. Both were rounding out the band's rhythm section while tackling new instruments, in what Glazier was sensing to be a "great starter group."

Glazier, too, had been extending her talents within the band, recording what was essentially an album's worth of material on a recording system that ultimately wasn't to her liking. She wanted to publicly offer up the first go of the record, but a direct appeal by Roberts to scrap it ultimately won her over. The work was erased, the old recording gear was sold, new home recording gear was secured and, given new energy on multiple fronts, the band began writing and tracking new material.

"I think you can also hear that in the record when it comes out," Glazier suggests. "Early in the pandemic, I was writing nothing, playing nothing. A year ago, I started writing again and there's this sweet, '50s-styled music that we've added. It sounds like a band made it."

Give the state government a small assist in all this. As the group members were individually grappling with the financial impact of the pandemic, Glazier recalls that it was her first unemployment check, of all things, that lit a spark.

"When it came in, I was like 'I should brush up on some new chords,'" she says. "That gave me the time to write songs and a new perspective of time, of going back to work. Life is so much shorter than it had already felt. Now I feel that it's really important to face inspiration all the time, face creativity all the time, to be continuously learning. That was the positive shift that I got out of the pandemic. From two years ago to now, I'm such a better guitar player. It's felt empowering. And that's all happened with one album."

Roberts concurs, saying, "Things can happen when you're not expecting them. My desire is to spend as much time as I can with people who are creative."

Glazier and Roberts say that "I Was Asleep" was a perfect track to kick off this album cycle, on a cut that allowed all the members to contribute. They say it's one that "all of us love."

At their album-release show, they'll be playing with a couple folks who appear on the album, guest musicians Elowyn Lapointe (shakers/tambourine) and Dave Payne (sax). As both Glazier and Roberts log time as employees of The DLC at Quarters, they're allowing themselves to go a bit more all-out this weekend. Expect some bits of stagecraft, those added musicians, extra lighting and even a series of drinks named after the songs.

"It feels like home in a way," says Roberts. "They're allowing us a lot of creative freedom for this night, and it's tempting to take advantage of that."

Daytime Lover will appear at The DLC at Quarters (5 E. 400 South) on Friday, March 4. Doors are at 8 pm, with Msking and Slick Velveteens also on the bill. Tickets for this 21-up show are available at quartersslc.com/the-dlc.