- Sea of Worry, the third full length album from Connecticut doom-gazers Have A Nice Life may not reach the desolate, dread-inducing lows of their cult debut record Deathconsciousness - but it’s a damn good effort at recapturing the bleakness that shot the band to internet cult acclaim.
With only seven tracks, it’s the shortest album from the band to date. An average track length of eight minutes is the first indication that Have A Nice Life aren’t going to be conservative in the amount of time they give each idea on the album. It’s the band’s attempt at continuing to create the grand, slowburn sound that built their success previously. Unfortunately, there just aren’t enough different ideas to recreate the grand sweep of their debut.
The problem with Sea of Worry is that despite nearly every number being great on its own, together they aren’t more than the sum of their parts, they just don’t gel to form a cohesive project. Album opener and first single, the titular Sea of Worry is one of the shortest singles that the band has released. With intense drumming, and dreary vocals, it showcases a captivating melody, undulating beneath its dark layers. Despite some irritating and cliched vocal hooks that seem to drain the exquisite tension, rather than enhance it, this is still a solid and gripping re-introduction to the band’s sound. Those vocals wouldn’t be an issue if they didn’t take away from the power of the instrumentation, but it’s comparable to an author telling rather than showing.
The album’s shorter run-time forces it to abandon most of the ambient and drone passages that filled Deathconsciousness and while it’s something that was integral to that album, I don’t miss it here. The band adapt this aspect of their sound into segments of various tracks. On Trespassers W -a revival of one of the band’s early demos- a short, ambient segue acts to heighten the tension as the song transitions to a dark finale. Similarly, on Science Beat, the shoegazey instrumentation fades into the background halfway through leaving only a melodic beat until the instrumentation slowly returns, delivering a satisfying climax.
The best is saved for last. Sea of Worry’s final two cuts are the thrilling, tumbling doom that has previously made me infatuated with Have A Nice Life. Lords of Tresserhorn constructs such a climax, where the instrumentation is blurred together in one of the fuzziest, most jarring passages I’ve heard since either Daughter’s You Won’t Get What You Want or, well, Have A Nice Life’s own earlier work. Album closer Destinos turns a spoken word sample of a preacher into a torrent of unrelenting, crushing power, filled with destructive howls and piercing, shoegaze instrumentation. Its slow build over thirteen minutes is grand and thankfully, provides the payoff I’d been craving the entire record.
With Sea of Worry, Have A Nice Life have tunnelled back into the same sonic space that brought them their first acclaim. It doesn’t cover new ground for the band, but for fans of their dreary and transfixing music, it certainly provides a harrowing listen and, if they endure long enough, at least some measure of the harsh reward they’re craving.
- Sean Tayler.