CONTAGIOUS

      [T]he insidious brilliance of the Contagious album is that the actual music cuts hard against the darkness. Winger had been getting heavily into funk, and that influence, along with jazz, disco, Southern boogie, and pop-punk, informs much of the playing. The great Australian songwriter Steve Kilbey once described the technique of combining upbeat music with downbeat lyrics as “a clown coming at you with a hand grenade.”

     With Slush Fund’s reissue of Contagious and a handful of scheduled reunion shows on the docket, it is time for the wider world to discover what tens of thousands of music fans across the Southeast and beyond have known for decades: Dayroom was one of the best bands of the final years of the rock era. And their music’s power has only grown in their absence. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s quote notwithstanding, second acts are possible in American life, and it’s time to tune in to this one.

                                                                                                                       -Robert Dean Lurie