HAVE A NICE LIFE
INTERVIEW WITH FOUNDING MEMBERS DAN BARRETT AND TIM MACUGA BY MARIKA ZORZI
CONSUMER
INTERVIEW WITH MULTI-INSTRUMENTALIST TIM MACUGA BY MARIKA ZORZI
PHOTO BY BEN STAS
Consumer features Tim Macuga from Have a Nice Life (HANL), as well as musicians from that project’s live lineup - bassist Mike Cameron, drummer, programmer and synth player Rich Otero, and guitarist and engineer Joe Streeter. In Computers is the first record released by the band, which formed in 2017. “The A-side is three songs that we wrote within the first few months of our inception,� Macuga explains. “The B-side, that’s pretty noisy, but those were soundscapes and tape-loops that had come out of some separate sessions.�
E
leven years after their initial release, Deathconsciousness, Have A Nice Life have found new focus and discipline on Sea of Worry. The new album, out in November 2019 via The Flenser, is a triumphant addition to their ever-evolving discography.
“I think all the records that we put out feel of a specific time and place,� founding member Dan Barrett says. “[With] this album that is very much the case. This record reflects us as a band now.� Have A Nice Life was formed at a time when founding members Barrett and Tim Macuga both dealt with depression and suicidal ideation. As the project’s following has grown, Dan and Tim have aged and faced new life challenges, such as family and careers. Sea of Worry reflects just that. “I think the biggest difference is that I got married and had kids,� Barrett admits. “I take being a dad very seriously. “Another thing that’s really different is that there’s an audience now,� he continues. “I think in the beginning we had nobody that cared. We’re still a very small band relative to anybody that does this seriously, but there are people who care when we put things out. I’ve also talked to a lot of people who have these really deep relationships with the stuff that’s we’ve made. So, I try to be more aware of that.�
“Essentially, the song-writing process just came out of me and Rich Otero and Mike Cameron paying rent on the same practice space that we were using for HANL rehearsals in 2017,� he continues. “We all kind of separately had some ideas for different styles and textures that we wanted to work in. The end result we felt comfortable releasing to the world around the same time that [HANL’s] Sea of Worry is coming out. I wouldn’t call it a demo, it’s been too fussed over and worked on and polished, but it’s kind of our first notion as an ensemble, that we’d gotten together and written between all of us.�
do they inherit that? It’s a constant sense of responsibility to other people. You do it because you want to do it, hopefully, but it’s still exhausting. I think a lot of that works its way into the record.â€? “Despite this feeling of agency we have with the iPhone in our pockets,â€? Tim Macuga adds. “It’s very easy to get cynical and feel like it’s not worth even hoping you have any power over things. Because you’re just minding your time, having the id centers in your brain refreshed, and being distracted from the bigger ecological problems, the bigger foreign policy problems that our country has right now.â€? “The closing track on Sea of Worry, called ‘Destinos,’â€? he continues. “That track is asking, ‘What am I?’ Period. Not, what am I in the context of my relationships or my job, or what am I in the context of these big political clashes of our times that I feel helpless in, but what does that make a person at the end of the day?â€? Maybe that’s a naĂŻve thing to lose sleep or burn calories thinking about, but for Dan and myself, a lot of those are very real.â€? The strong relationship between Barrett and Macuga is, without a doubt, what keeps Have A Nice Life together. “Tim has been my best friend for a very long time now,â€? Barrett says. “But beyond that I’ve never had a working relationship or a creative relationship with anyone even remotely like him. That’s just such a valuable thing.â€?
“The band itself is an element of our friendship, our relationship.â€? Macuga adds. “Whenever we’re writing an “I don’t know if it’s just because I’m older, but a lot of the stuff that I wrote – it’s not like I regret it, because I don’t, album or playing for live shows, it’s just us two. It sounds like a marriage commitment. In a way, the two of us are rivals but I’m also careful to think more about what it does once for the attention of our spouses, in terms of the amount it’s out there, and how people are going to relate to it. I don’t want it to just be, ‘hey, killing yourself is super cool.’ of attention that we put into each other’s projects. It’s a relationship with that kind of gravity.â€? There’s definitely a thread in our community that toes that line a little too closely for my taste. And maybe that’s just me getting older, but it’s definitely different now than it was “The thing that Have A Nice Life has, that no other project that I work with has, is the sheer joy of making music with before.â€? Tim. And from this time around, with the other guys in the band,â€? Barrett explains. “I get to be surprised by stuff all As the title suggests, dread is the primary theme throughout the time and it’s just so great. There’s this feeling when Sea of Worry. “I’m definitely somewhere on the neurotic we’ve recorded something, when we play it back and it end of the spectrum there,â€? Barrett confesses. “I do tend to sounds like a real song, there’s this feeling that I get that worry about a fair amount of things. Especially when you is just pure excitement. I feel like I just want to run around have kids, there’s just this kind of endless supply of things to the room. I’m just not able to get that in any other way.â€? đ&#x;’Ł worry about. I worry about my depressive tendencies, like
62 NEW NOISE
Even though all the band members come from Have A Nice Life, this project is aimed at a different purpose, Macuga says. “HANL is deeply personal stuff. Consumer, that’s kind of a place for a conceptual processing of where we are as a late-capitalist society, where automation has made human labor redundant. Not dystopian themes, but sometimes very dry economic ideas that we want to give voice to or critique. We figured that a different project would be necessary for that kind of thing, that wouldn’t fit the inward-looking, private, emotional vibes that HANL does. Sonically, HANL has its louder parts, it has its synthier parts, but that kind of loud and heavy and damaged and broken kind of sound that we’ve brought to Consumer, some of those sounds don’t quite have the same home as with HANL.� Macuga says that bass-player Mike Cameron came up with the title In Computers, and thought it would be open to different interpretations. “I like the idea that it’s open to a variety of directions and putting it all together. The lyrics are very focused on our roles as buyers and movers of product in this society, but in terms of the loudness and the bigness of the size we’re going for, there’s the destructive doom-metal element in it. It makes room for the idea of the consumption of fire, the consumption of matter in the universe, so I like the fact that it can cut in different directions,� he explains. “Most people,� he continues. “Even if they’re not willing to admit that we’re running up against ecological constraints, material constraints, scientifically we have the data to point to the idea that our consumption-driven lifestyles are not a good thing, not just for the environment around us, but for us in terms of our personal health. To suggest some sort of ascetic, sacrificial kind of lifestyle to preserve and conserve what we can about the world in which we live, it’s almost antithetical to the idea of how to sell people shit that they don’t need. I guess that’s an attractive idea for us to follow. The lyrics that we write for Consumer aren’t too wordy, they almost sound kind of caveman-like or dumb, because that’s what consumers are expected to be. It’s to give in to that id, to allow the latest flavor-blasted snack that the gas station is trying to sell us to push that pleasure center, and let us invite it in. The fact that we’ve gotten too good at selling things to the chemical components of our brain that we don’t actually really have control over, it’s kind of scary.�
