Its beauty is equalled by its anxiety and forward focus. Ascendant, cosmic, and beyond reach, it’s a soundscape so pummeling that its base congruent harmony resembles that of a Gregorian chant, a droning choir that percolates along deep keyboard note accents. The second half opens with “Everything We Forget,” and its tonal shift couldn’t be more abrupt. It’s perplexing, but ultimately a fitting way to end the first half. Its howling delayed guitars and simplistic percussive structures play off each other beautifully, but its second half escalates, playing more with volume and tonality. It’s also one of HANL’s oldest tracks, appearing off demos from ancient yesteryear. The first half closes surprisingly with “Trespassers W,” a veritable pop goldmine. Beautifully harmonic, contemplative and rich, there’s a velvety overlay to its production that floats into ethereal space, closing with Dan’s vocal track laid out in endless repetition of one of the most hauntingly beautiful lines in HANL’s storied career: “ All along/ I’ve felt an invisible hand guiding my errant heart/I consume and am consumed in part.” “Science Beat” acts as a wonderful palate cleanser, while keeping the momentum of the album going. Dan’s vocals calling the track into a decadent mass of apocalyptic noise. After a break, a bassline emerges that is so grisly it sounds like its neck is being scraped across the concrete, while the drum set is blown out into smithereens against a soundscape of jagged pianos. It’s the second half of the track that should dispel any notions of the band severing ties with their former sounds. Tonally this song is upbeat, but don’t be fooled, there is a snarling mass of lyrical brutality below the surface.Ĭontinuing the gothic dancehall explorations, the pop aspirations of “Dracula Bells” benefits from Macuga’s articulate guitars. Its chorus is once more a testament in its brutal honesty: “ Fell every tree in the forest/Put a bullet in every poet/Flatten every mountain/Level every hill/You’d best believe it/Cause they fucking will.” The message is bleak, the potentiality for living in a dystopian corporatized environmental apocalypse is something we are already living, we just choose not to accept it. The first half begins with the title track, which leans heavily into post-punk with blurry guitar tones and a pulsating bass that mummifies the track in subterranean trenches of abyssal black. As an album, both sides, both halves avoid the sometimes directionless (although brilliant) spirals of their prior LPs but instead operate with a fixation and calmness that conveys maturation and planning. It’s effectively the present meeting the past, realized in a far more rigorous effort. Through this dichotomy we see that while both sides lyrically steadily caress the boundaries of an existential oblivion, they operate in two different aesthetic forms. Sea of Worry is divided into two halves, each of which operates in distinct fashion from one another.
#Have a nice life dan barrett full
Now expanded to a full band, the dynamism and inherent sound of the group has expanded to unprecedented heights. Sea of Worry is a new venture for the group. The single most interesting aspect about the band’s third album, Sea of Worry, is that it displays a growth and maturity that is equally as startling and profound. These albums are as philosophical as they are coherent with vocalist Dan Barrett and guitarist Tim Macuga’s life experiences and influences. From the ambitious and haunting melancholy of Deathconsciousness to the depressive fervor of The Unnatural World, Have a Nice Life have spent a great portion of their time crafting albums that are designed to reflect a genuine worldview that is immersed in darkness, or perhaps submerged in nihilism.
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