Golf Lexapro is the recording project of James Rainis, a Brooklynite set to release his debut EP next month via Fluorescent Thought. While most of the release is currently under wraps, opening track and lead single, ‘Beatitudes’ serves as an great introduction to the Golf Lexapro aesthetic and should more than whet your appetite.
Unfurling like a cross between Pavement and Abe Vigoda, the track’s magnetic nonchalance masks what is a pretty deep and pertinent commentary, exploring an uniquely twenty-first century variety of existential dread. As Rainis explains: “‘Beatitudes’ is a play on the blessings found in the Gospel of Matthew. As a lapsed Catholic and recreational alcoholic, Sundays are wrought with guilt – it’s hard to tell if it’s the hangover or something bigger.”
This something bigger is elucidated by Rainis’s blending of banal details of young life with religious language and sentences, turning pretty ordinary observations into something with a ritualistic edge and thereby hinting that the chemicals here are more than mere hedonistic pursuits of pleasure. “This song tries to address the weird prevalence of drugs and alcohol amongst people my age,” Rainis continues, “and how it might be a way for us to cope with the doubt that comes with aging, whether that is in a higher power or whatever.”
“Blessed are those who actually brought booze,Yours is a morning of pancakes and porn flicks and woe,Blessed are those who came here and got screwed,Well, if carnally, nice! But if figuratively, hey, that’s how it goes”
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The Gold Lexapro EP is out via Fluorescent Thought on the 10th March, and you can pre-order it now from their Bandcamp page. Rainis will also play a release show that night at The Silent barn alongside Abi Reimold, Stolen Jars and Crumb, and you can find full details here.