Lee AdcockIt’s fucking July / shouldn’t you be on vacation?
Pure relaxation don’t come easy these days. There’s myriad reasons for that; sure, blame the phones for the dopamine feed, but then the price of admission to a worry-free paradise hasn’t gotten easier to climb to, especially not in this gig economy. And even if you could stake out a pristine bit of beach shore for yourself, wouldn’t some scrap of guilt tug at your conscience? All that money could’ve been funneled somewhere else—a friend could’ve tagged along, and think of all that productivity you’ve tossed aside just to lounge here in the sun. You bastard.
I thought Aidan Burns (formerly of Wounded Deer, currently in Ravel) was joking when they first told me a year ago they were working on a “post-yacht rock” project. “OK, sure,” I said with a laugh as we trekked to the gas station. Yet, while the cover to Slicke’s Majestic 6’s Beyond the Yellow Slick Road looks like a starter pack for memes about the good life, a more perplexing jumble awaits under the surface. The tropical paradise trickles in from distant bossa nova shuffles, shrouded in murky distortion and the fog of the mundane; even moments of relative chill (like the intentionally meaningless “A Tenuous Grasp”) can send an inexplicable shudder down your spine. That’s the subtle genius of BTYSR—Burns recognizes that the era of excess is over. And so, instead of tinting the past with rosy shades, they catch the vapors of “bliss” through lidded, sleep-deprived eyes. And even through that drowsy haze, sometimes beauty still shines through.
God, where do we begin? Even now I feel a bit dizzy as I try to ease you, the optimistic tourist, into a one-way cruise to purgatory. Let’s put it this way: if you asked me my opinion about Preoccupations, I’d say they’re post-punk posers that suck at naming their own bands. But sometimes I get stuck in very particular Preoccupations songs, because they create the sensation of straddling two worlds—one known, one unknown; one dead ahead, the other simmering below; one weighing heavy on yr conscious, the other repressed but clawing at your feet. “…For Comfort,” the sprawling two-part single that looms like fog over the ocean, overtakes me in the same way, yet also in a different way. This netherworld feels not like claws, but more like the final shimmer of Joy Division’s “Atmosphere”—yet not that, too. It’s hard to say. Do millennials ever stare at sunrises or sunsets anymore? I feel, simultaneously, like I’m watching and missing the sunrise.
Ach. Listen to me. I’m a passenger on the Majestic 6, somnambulating across the bow to my playlist. It’s easy to wander here; for a silly concept, BTYSR certainly swerves in more directions than you’d expect. “(I Love) Global Warming” sets us up for a moody long haul, dire albums from the ‘80s that I can’t even discern anymore, but with a hint of piña colada. And then “Jackie and Jill” cheekily rips Steely Dan for a wonky anecdote about two villagers who threw themselves down the well; “Don’t U Go Burstin’ My Bubble” lets us drift near calm, Brazilian shores; “Oily Waters” pulls a U-turn into trip-hop and a dreary day stuck on a MARTA train. No matter where Burns takes us, though, something always looks out of place, like glitches in the Matrix. And actually, that’s about right, because when the motorik rhythm of “If You Can’t Beat ‘Em… You Get Beaten” succumbs to a lazy Pink Floyd crawl, we float into a lecture on the serious threat of depression.
And so, even when paradise (or just a sunrise?) seems to roll into view on the jazzy closer “Rain is in the Forecast,” you can’t help but feel a sense of loss. “Rain is in the forecast today / putting some space between us,” Burns notes, “when it dries, everything will be clearer.” Which sounds like a nice and wistful note to end on, but then there’s a whole other song after that, another perky number that sounds like an Aztec Camera demo with half the tape warped beyond recovery. And while I do wonder sometimes if some of these disparate ideas could be separated a bit better, that disorientation is also the point. We’re always living in two or three worlds now—the social networks, TV shows, the daily commute—and sometimes the hopes and dreams that brought us here in the first place fade under the day’s new fears.
Maybe you and I will never board a yacht in our lives, and that’s fine. Besides, we’ll never truly be at ease until we can dive into ourselves and admire the lush paradox of our own psyche. And that’s the destination for BTYSR: not total bliss, but an internal harmony of both anxiety and solace. We never get there, but then that’s the underlying scam behind all tourist trap resorts, isn’t it? You find what you really need in the journey.
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Bandcamp: majestic6.bandcamp.com