Fast forward a few months and Godfrey is back with new single ‘Mount Misery’ ahead of the album’s release. The song is as upbeat as anything Belaver has put out to date, but beneath the surface lies a cutting critique of consumerism and entitlement. “Even in death I still expect treasure forever for doing nothing,” go the final lines. “If I’m not entitled to be fed and be fucked / That might mean I might be the one who is what I say is my enemy.”

The song comes complete with a video designed in collaboration with fifteen animators, a process which itself reached into the heart of one such exploitative scene. Dust Reid of Feel Bad Records explains the concept in detail:

Ben showed me this Medium article about how wikiHow exploits its artistic labor by hiring global talent through services like Fiverr and then having the artists sign an NDA so they wouldn’t receive credit for their work. This seems to be the general operating M.O. for corporations when commissioning cheaper labor and it prevents the artist from building a portfolio which would help lead them to bigger commissions. We decided to use Fiverr but in our outreach asked each animator for photos, bios and links to their work and told them we want to collectively publicize who they were.

The “Mount Misery” music video captures our attempt at modernizing the ‘American Dream.’ In corporate America we’ve come to see how creatives can get the short end of the stick. With this video concept, we aim to popularize promoting people’s work and ascribing value to their contributions. We hired 17 incredible animators to represent and design different segments of the song, encouraging them to fold in their own vision to our story; the end result is the quilted essence of Mount Misery’s message.

We gave each animator a prompt, some asked for storyboards which we provided and others provided them back. The only direction we gave on the physical appearance of the character throughout was that it should be a blond man. Some interpretations didn’t end up having blonde hair but it was truly a collaborative effort and to each animator we are thankful for their interest and enthusiasm on this project.

Lain Prone is out on the 22nd October and you can pre-order it from the Belaver Bandcamp page.

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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.

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Acting as an encapsulation of the Belaver aesthetic, the sound is undeniably downbeat, imagining a series of possible futures that range from disastrous to ridiculous, though a thin seam of hope perseveres. However fatalistic the song might be, it is never purely pessimistic, remaining as open to the dice landing favorably as it is to the inevitable set of snake eyes.

This month sees Belaver return with ‘Here It Comes’, a brand new single that continues this mood into the newly dystopian present. “They say the world is going to end,” goes the opening lines. “It’s everybody’s final chance / to make it better if they can / it’s up to them.” It’s the one-two punch of our times, societal collapse and society’s insistence that only personal responsibility can stop the fall. But the oceans are rising and choked with plastic, the earth is barren and dry. What hope is there?

‘Here It Comes’ takes a queer delight in the fulfilment of its prophecies, a kind of release that only comes with accepting the worst. “We’ll try to get it right next time,” Godfrey sings, “and if we fuck up, so what? / So we die another time.” The thing about the death-fearing pessimist is he’s always proven right in the end.

Check out the video below, with cinematography from A. Jung and directed by Godfrey himself.

‘Here it Comes’ is out now via Feel Bad Records.

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We first wrote about B.E. Godfrey’s Belaver project back in October, describing how his music “explor[es] the dark and dingy corners of the human experience” with its off-kilter, noir-ish retro pop aesthetic. After a series of singles, this month sees the release of the debut Belaver album, True Love of Crime—a record which draws upon everything from goth and electronic to the alt-country of Bill Callahan to create a strange, melancholic world.

We’re drawn into this sphere immediately with opening track ‘Prisoner’, the wistful strum and ambient textures heralding Godfrey’s distinctively downbeat vocals. There’s a touch of Say Hi in ‘Partners’, a song about how even the most hardened or volatile criminals need a getaway driver, while ‘Doer’ ups the synths to create a glassy soundscape, its spacious style populated with a variety of warm and playful flourishes as the lyrics explore identity in the face of addiction.

Oh no
I think I did it again
I might have done that thing again

Don’t go
Yeah I might never quit
but what am I without it?

The more upbeat elements are stripped away on the minimal ‘Swimmer’, Godfrey channeling Phil Elverum in his wordy delivery, though details begin to bleed through as the track develops, highlighting one of Belaver’s true strengths in the ability to present isolation and loneliness with an almost transcendental air. The Elverum comparison stands for ‘Grave Robber’ too, which provides what we previously called “a cross between Mt. Eerie and Monarch Mtn—twilit and noir-ish, traipsing through ancient catacombs and holding a torch to whatever dusty relics are found.”

After the interlude of ‘Dancer’, which is something like Owen Ashworth soundtracking a Twin Peaks VHS, ‘Vampire’ arrives in all of its theatrical horror. Accompanied by a video from Dustin M Reid, the song is for all the things moving through the darkness, lurking in shadows and lunging at those unfortunate enough to stray from the path.

The retro weirdness is dialed to ten on closing track ‘Driver’, a creeping neon-dripped reach for something new or different. Acting as an encapsulation of the Belaver aesthetic, the sound is undeniably downbeat, imagining a series of possible futures that range from disastrous to ridiculous, though a thin seam of hope perseveres. However fatalistic the song might be, it is never purely pessimistic, remaining as open to the dice landing favorably as it is to the inevitable set of snake eyes. The track comes complete with a video from Che Houston, starring Harvey Kaufman as a news anchor intent on revealing Belaver’s shady past, a film-grained view of backwards memories and past events, not to mention our relationship with the unending fascination with images

Oh say, can you believe what I see?
I see our bodies, exploding
Do you really think if we keep driving
we’ll break free of the barricade?

True Love of Crime is out now and you can get it from a variety of Belaver pages.

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