Every time we write about Belaver, from 2019 record True Love of Crime to last year’s single, ‘Here It Comes‘, we try to come up with new ways to the describe a dark, playful and often ominous style. The songwriting project of New York‘s Ben Godfrey, the outfit has developed a peculiar, fatalistic tone quite unlike anything else. A blend of deadpan humour and human heart which proves ideally suited to capturing the bleak and bizarre milieu to which it belongs.
The latest Belaver single is no different. ’70’s Adventure’ is the first taste of a new collaboration between Godfrey and Robert Ellis, who produced the forthcoming new Belaver album, Lain Prone. The pair share a long history, having met around Houston’s DIY scene in the early 2000s and playing, touring and recording together ever since. You get the sense that such familiarity is key, that Ellis is someone who understands Godfrey’s singular style and can help realise it more fully. The record’s first single, ’70’s Adventure’, is proof that such cooperation is bearing fruit.
Because the track is Belaver in perhaps its most distilled form yet. A strange, melancholic number seemingly caught between laughing and crying, the sardonic tone refusing to undermine the emotion at the core. Instead, it settles into a surreal sort of drift, a meandering numbness which nothing quite penetrates, no matter how intense or outlandish. The mood is captured in a video directed by Erica Alexandria Silverman, where Godfrey paddles through absurd landscapes with barely a second glance.
’70’s Adventure’ is out now via Feel Bad Records. Stay tuned for more information on Lain Prone.