Shoegaze Roundup: Death of Lovers and Have a Nice Life

Now everybody so 80s, 90s inspired

But none of you ni**as 80s and 90s rhymin’…

-Pusha T

You hear things like “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” and that artists will “wear their influences on their sleeves.” But what if those influences are not only on sleeves, but worn pretty much everywhere else?

Using the term “shoegaze” to describe your band these days can be incredibly dangerous, and at times misleading (just search it in Bandcamp sometime.) Give a guitarist a few reverb and delay pedals, and suddenly they think that they are Kevin Shields.

There are a lot of theoretical genres that you can use to describe new artists that are culling quite a bit from the past and applying it to their sound today—shoegaze, dream pop, post punk, coldwave, darkwave, et. al. You hear influences of the almighty My Bloody Valentine or the ghost of Ian Curtis and Joy Division; you can feel the gloom and doom of groups like Bauhaus, Love and Rockets, Killing Joke, and to some extent, The Jesus and Mary Chain, etc; or you can see the dreamy swirls of someone like The Cocteau Twins; and then on top of it all—there’s just a whole 1980s and early 90s kind of vibe present, to cast a long, ominous shadow.

Sometimes, paying homage to the artists that influenced you is nice, and genuine—and the resulting product doesn’t come off derivative or unoriginal.  Instead, you use it as a logical starting point, and add something of your own to it. Other times, the homage turns sour, and the result can be uninspired and flaccid.

Even worse is when it’s tough to tell what side an album has fallen into. As it turns, out, I feel like that is possibly the case for both Buried Under a World of Roses by Death of Lovers, and The Unnatural World by Have a Nice Life.

Death of Lovers is a recently formed “supergroup,” if you will—comprised of members from the shoegaze outfits Nothing and Whirr. Buried Under a World is their debut effort; a rather short, four song EP, clocking in at around twenty minutes. The opening track, “Cold Heaven,” boasts some big post punk vibes, driven primarily by the chugging bass, distant sounding, reverby percussion, and vocals that are trying their hardest to sound like a dead ringer (too soon?) for Ian Curtis.

Over the course of the four tracks on the EP, Death of Lovers struggle with walking the line between very gloomy synth driven joints, or rather slow, plodding, ominous trudges. The title track is the most uptempo of the bunch—but that’s not to say it’s uplifting. It just has a little bit of speed to it—driven mostly by HEAVY 80s sounding gothic synths and shimmery, dreamy guitars.

On the other hand, The Unnatural World, by the doomy and gloomy duo Have a Nice Life, takes all the aforementioned aesthetics, and just makes them exponentially more inaccessible to a casual listener. The Unnatural World is unhinged, noisy, and abrasive, boasting a rather unpolished for the sake of being unpolished style of production value (slightly reminiscent of Florida post-punk shoegazers Merchandise or the early days of A Place to Bury Strangers)—everything crackles and clips, in comparison to the relatively smooth and rather balanced values of Buried Under a World of Roses.

Have a Nice Life’s affect is also just way more menacing. The music is angrier, and while both of these records feature “occult-y” imagery, The Unnatural World succeeds in just being really unsettling—like the creepy as fuck sample of a child being interviewed in some kind of psychiatric hospital that opens the track “Cropsey,” or the layered near-wordless singing and guitar drones that continue to build on “Music Will Unntune The Sky.”

And now, maybe, perhaps you’ve spent a portion of this review wondering why I chose to begin by quoting lyrics from the intro track to Pusha T’s mixtape Wrath of Caine. What does coke rap have to do with shoegaze?

Well, you see, it’s quite simple, really, if you already haven’t gone to your mind palace to deduce why.

There are many acts out there right now that are so 80s and 90s inspired (literally), but rarely do you hear anything revelatory, refreshing, or on the same level as the originals.

These albums in question aren’t necessarily bad, but I find that I am, for the most part, rather unmoved by them. In the case of Death of Lovers, since they are such a new band, a four-song EP doesn’t really give them enough time to find their footing, but if they were to maybe focus in more on a cohesive sound rather than the unified atmosphere, as well as adding some modern exuberance, it may benefit them in the future.

Have a Nice Life have been at it for much longer—almost fifteen years, according to their Wikipedia page. The Unnatural World is their second full length, and while it was more interesting of a listen in comparison, it is, again, not some thing I am certain how often I will be returning to.

Buried Under a World of Roses is available now courtesy of Deathwish Records, while The Unnatural World, also out now, arrives via Enemies List/Flesner Records.