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Acknowledging negative feelings and having a contained space to work through them allows us to leave that behind. It’s the musical equivalent of having a bad day, coming home, and screaming into your pillow - strangely comforting, allowing you to soak in that negativity for just a moment to help you move on. That’s generally the appeal I feel in gloomy albums. The Unnatural World is a dark, gloomy album punctuated with moments of ferocity. The closer, “ Emptiness will Eat the Witch,” can’t find as many interesting things in simplicity, instead presenting its idea in the first minute and sitting there for another seven, never really developing or moving off what isn’t a very interesting musical idea in the first place. I like the simplicity and the melancholy feel of the big minor chords, and the original vocal sample is soaring and cool to listen move through phases. The singer loops a sung “I am sorry” over top, introducing and removing instances and having bits go in and out of phase with each other. “ Music will Untune the Sky” takes a page from Sunn 0)))’s catalog, building their song around big, droney chords. Not everything Have a Nice Life do relies on dynamics. “Cropsey” proper isn’t a very loud song, but spending so much time on the sample makes the song feel big in comparison. As the listener is straining to hear, the band bursts in with thunderous drums. “ Cropsey” opens with a really creepy recording of a child in a mental institution, overlaying bits of the sample over each other so the listener has to listen closely to pick out what each part says. We can also use varying amounts of distortion to turn a more quiet, contemplative part into something more hissing, more snarling, like in “ Burial Society.” The other dynamic trick I hear in this album has to do with samples. This trick is central to opener “Guggenheim Wax Museum,” the thin, tinny guitars providing excellent contrast to a booming keys part. This allows us to bring in guitar at the moment we want release.
#Burial society have a nice life full
We can create a verse part of just drum machine and keys, knowing that the warm fuzz of distortion on the keys will make the song fill full enough but still gives us room to bring in more sound. This both fills in a lot of the blank space in these songs, giving them more body, and allows a lot more flexibility in composition. One of most important things that allow Have A Nice Life to create these explosive choruses and moments of release is the grainy distortion they wrap everything in. How they make the space for this dynamic range is what I find interesting. It’s just one dude playing drums or something. Typically two-pieces bring a lot of immediacy because if someone is holding back, there just isn’t much of a song. I bring this up not because two-piece bands are uncommon, but that Have a Nice Life do something very strange for a two-piece - they attempt to bring in a fair share of dynamics. “ Dan and Tim, Reunited by Fate,” is a guitar and bass track, with a constant drum loop playing in the background (some electronics are introduced at the end, but there’s no bass part here, further affirming my idea keys and bass are performing double duty). “ Guggenheim Wax Museum,” for example, uses guitar but no bass, the keys taking the responsibility for providing the low end. The album has guitar and bass, but bass typically doesn’t appear in tracks that use keys. Drums are handled either by drum machine or looper, which could easily be played along with keys or just left to its own devices while playing a bass. Everything here is achievable with two people. Have a Nice Life is nominally a two piece (Dan and Tim), and the composition of the songs reflects how small the band is. The worldview here isn’t necessarily a positive one, but it also expresses a desire to be rid of that kind of negativity, which I like. Obviously, if you’re mainly working on the release of emotion, then you need to build an emotion first, so the album also works on some angst and a bit of doom and gloom (I love me some doom and gloom). The real interesting mood here is the sense of catharsis that runs throughout the album - choruses take it up to another level, vocals are shouts that just barely rise above walls of noise.
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Noise and post-punk have already been all over this year-in-review, and this isn’t the last time either will show up again. Or maybe they’re just things I think are cool. I’m a bit surprised at how little was said about The Unnatural World(I blame the band for naming themselves Have a Nice Life). Post-punk is in a bit of a revival period, and taking elements of noise and shoegaze is a cool thing to do.