New England shoegazers Have A Nice Life (Consisting of Dan Barrett and Tim Macuga) are finally back to make you feel awful about everything with the release of their highly anticipated album, The Unnatural World. This album takes a step back from their dreamier, poppier tones from their previous album, and decides to create a more focused, darker album.
I have yet to write a proper review for this one. I'm letting it sink in fully before I go out of the way to type up a post about it. However, I will say this - my first impressions are that Dan Barrett knows he's got a following now, and I believe he's using that to try and get away with making some less than fantastic tunes by experimenting or forgoing dynamics. He and Tim are still keeping it quite interesting though, they've thrown in what I percieve to be post-punk elements with the song Unholy Life, darker indie rock elements with Dan and Tim, Reunited by Fate.
So far my favourite song is Burial Society. Listening to Guggenheim Wax is what despair sounds like - wretched,
drawn out, taunting you like some kind of fucked up voice in the
distance, and as an opener it sets up the album really well. The remix of Defenestration Song is not as bad as I gave it credit for, but still feels like they've mixed it a bit crap for artistic merits.
It's as if the negativity that festered in Dan's Giles Corey project has bled into this album. The passion of both the musicians isn't as vibrant as it was over Deathconsciousness and the Voids EP, it's a manifestation of misery. Like I said before, this is much, much closer to what despair would sound like if you gave it form, not loud but drawn out, taunting you from behind a wall of ambience in a similar way to how the mind taunts a person when everything else is background noise.
http://pitchfork.com/advance/317-the-unnatural-world/
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