Album Review: Have a Nice Life - Sea of Worry
One of the most peculiar byproducts of the underground, forum-driven music fandom that sprang up on the Internet in the mid-2000s is the status bestowed upon ignored or underappreciated albums solely though online discourse. Both older, seemingly forgotten records (Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea) and newer releases (The Antlers' Hospice) could garner an unexpected fame simply through anonymous discussion on places like 4chan's /mu/ board, generating both a mainstream reevaluation and an explosion in popularity for the artists who created these (literal) cult classics. And any discussion of this phenomenon would be remiss if it excluded Deathconsciousness, the 2008 debut from Connecticut duo Have a Nice Life with a cropped version of Jacques-Louis David's painting The Death of Marat placed irreverently on its front. As iconic and evocative as the cover is, however, nothing could prepare the listener for what lay beneath its gloomy exterior: an ambient blend of post-punk, shoegaze, drone, and countless other styles that put a voice to the darkest corners of the human experience. To find any song on its own with the kinetic beauty of Holy Fucking Shit: 40,000 or the primal catharsis of Earthmover would be a gift; that they both exist, along with so much more, on the same double album is an unmistakable miracle.
In the wake of such an unlikely success, Have a Nice Life have remained surprisingly silent with regards to new material. While both Dan Barrett and Tim Macuga have kept themselves busy with solo projects, fans were forced to wait until 2014 for the next Have a Nice Life album The Unnatural World (which critics were much more eager to instantly praise), and another five years after that for their third record, the recently released Sea of Worry. But where The Unnatural World and Barrett's much acclaimed solo album Giles Corey could be described as faithful recreations of the Deathconsciousness formula, Sea of Worry strikes out in bold new directions whilst still maintaining enough elements of the group's past work so as to not alienate their devoted fanbase; the result is far from what was expected, but nonetheless immersive and enjoyable.
Any fans of the duo's previous works will immediately pick up on the drastic revisions to their style; the title track which begins the record opens with what is practically a surf rock riff, the echoing guitar and crisp, steady drum beat sounding unlike anything the group has done before. The relatively plain melodic line and nihilistic lyrics are perhaps a tad rudimentary for such an accomplished outfit, but the emotion present whenever the chorus explodes in one's ears and Barrett intones "Flatten every mountain/Level every hill/You'd best believe it/'Cause they fucking will" is undeniable. This track, along with similar guitar-heavy cuts like Dracula Bells and Trespassers W, will no doubt disappoint the purist section of the band's fanbase, even if the duo takes to this new sound quite capably. Dracula Bells in particular stands out as a powerful demonstration of their aural range, the bare-bones percussion and repetitive guitar melody evolving across the first half of the seven-minute track until suddenly abating to make room for a cutting bass line and dissonant piano notes that later fuse with the earlier sound to create an eruption of noise and passion. The lyrics begin with a critique of the religious and their blind hope for salvation through a messiah, but eventually the recurring chant of "You're going to wait a long time" gives way to Barrett's realization that his faith in finding completion through other people is no less inane: "We're going to wait a long time/But I'm willing to wait/Oh, let me find the right one/Someone to love, someone to hate".
The heavy, layered, and often overwhelming sounds that fans of the duo are used to still rear their head on Sea of Worry, most notably on Lords of Tresserhorn. The distorted guitar that churns steadily underneath the delicate piano and pessimistic lyrics ("I guess I though I'd know/What I'm doing by now/But I know nothing/And I know it very well") starts out as merely eerie and unsettling, but builds to a cacophony of aberrant noise that dominates the second half of the track. Barrett's strained shouts of "Nothing will ever go wrong" become lost in the ocean of sound, a vain attempt to convince himself that happiness is possible despite the unrelenting sonic assault refusing to let up for even a second. Curiously, the most uplifting moment on the album might be Everything We Forget, an instrumental drone of electronic noise that sounds almost heavenly. If the rest of the album paints a stark picture of descent and depression, it's refreshing to hear an aural representation of something more positive, even if the monotonous nature of the track leaves it as one of the weaker moments on the record.
The religious and nihilistic themes present all over the record come to a head on Destinos, the thirteen-minute closer which opens with an extended vocal sample of an unnamed pastor discussing the problem of Hell (the theological dilemma of rationalizing the existence of a benevolent God with that of a hell that He sends people to suffer in). The group has utilized similar vocal snippets in songs before (Cropsey off of The Unnatural World, Empty Churches off of Giles Corey), and while those examples are admittedly more atmospheric, the ambient, unsettling choral singing that creeps in underneath the preacher's words generates an immensely disturbing ambience. As the preacher's voice fades out underneath acoustic strumming and reverberating shoegaze guitar tones, Barrett's voice enters to take his place, muted as he bemoans a lack of control over his life: "Way down, beneath the skin/Beneath my body's grey walls/Is how I begin to see that nothing's my fault". The ensemble of noise builds to a terrifying crescendo before slowly fading out into a plodding drum beat underscored by a droning bass hum, Barrett's last, desperate words barely audible amidst everything happening around him: "At least I caught myself before I sent this out/Into a stupid world that doesn't give a damn/Oh, what kind of fool do you think I am?".
There are moments during the guitar-heavy songs on Sea of Worry where one can't help but miss the rougher, more adventurous sound of previous Have a Nice Life projects, and for some these moments will be enough to write this album off as a failed experiment in unnecessary innovation. But even if many will not take to the rock instrumentation and more traditional song structures present here, it cannot be said that the duo have neglected to put the same attention to detail into this record as they have with their earlier projects. The echoing production, unique blending of genre, and thematic exploration of their most beloved records all exist here, albeit in a form less concerned with the raw personifications of emotion that earned the group their unlikely fanbase in the first place. Ultimately, while it lacks to an extent the emotional potency of Deathconsciousness and the apocalyptic splendor of Giles Corey, Sea of Worry offers the same appreciable glimpse into humanity's vilest evils that first drew people in over a decade ago, and time has not dulled the power of that deliverance in the slightest.
8/10
Favourite Tracks: Dracula Bells, Science Beat, Destinos