Come and gone, chillwave seems more the distant memory than
the brazing listen. If you ask former advocates of the craze that was, such as
Washed Out, the genre was just a stepping-stone for their musical intuitions.
Manifesting itself now in more organic projects rather than laptop symphonies
is natural instrumentation. A voice, a melody, a progression. It is hard to
take Work Drugs as anything but relaxation speaking directly at you. But this
is where chillwave graduated from, marrying beats to stories of being
individual. We grow up alongside music, our influence the trajectory that is
the imagination of sound.
Work Drugs is a duo from Philly, Benjamin Louisiania and
Thomas Crystal. They are predictable guys, actually. Not that they’re young,
they sail, they live in an abandoned pier or make ambient music, as they call
it smooth-fi. What our hindsight bias emanates is that as guys who sail, they
choose this brand of music to pursue. These soft melodies are rich with scaling
guitars all too pretty and gentle choruses that float on to the banks of their
Delaware River, right with them. It is 80’s influenced soft rock, discouraged
by many for being too lenient, too mellow. But Work Drugs is unafraid of those
weighty misconceptions; they make the music for themselves.
The smooth mix they produced as a rework of previous covered
Indieball artist Little Scream, is gorgeous and extremely sexual. “The Heron and the Fox” is an audible aphrodisiac that harvests among jazzy saxaphones,
shakers, and unforgettable Laurel Sprengelmeyer vocals. The track sings within
you and tells you how cool you truly are. It is much the same on the other
track “Third Wave”, a pornographic cover of Summer Heart that conjures a spirit
of sand in your mouth. With chiller riffs and eluding drum machines, Work Drugs
powers you on stories of the sea. But beneath the elements it really is
something we all connect to : find love, and never let it go.
The original post is here where you can download the tracks.
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