Flipping through the channels not sure which side I’m on
Prada suit repeating, “Folks, please stay calm.”
But the piranhas swimming under him are jumping pretty damn high
He’s on the ladder to a chopper going somewhere safe and dry
Psychic Lines, the long-running project of Brooklyn songwriter Philip Jacob, has the sort of backstory that sounds less like a press bio than a trail of weird little breadcrumbs left across the American underground. Cincinnati birth, Louisville adolescence, nineties sampling experiments, four-track guitar awakenings, Brooklyn arrival in 2003, Zachary Cale sideman duties, Vague Plot, and…bless the greasy little gods of rock trivia – a Captain Beefheart tribute band called Admiral Porkbrain. Somewhere in that zigzag sits a songwriter with one eye on Leonard Cohen, another on Stephin Merritt, and a third, possibly borrowed from a gas-station alien, watching the Grand Old Party eat itself on basic cable.
On Horror Comedy, Jacob looks at the news and wonders whether he has stumbled into some cheapo B-movie with better lighting and worse morals. As David Lynch once said, “What a great time to be alive if you love the theater of the absurd.” That line hangs over the song like a busted exit sign. The lyrics turn societal collapse into a carnival mirror: politicians with monster-movie faces, reassurance from a Prada-suited mouthpiece, panic below deck while the important people scramble toward the helicopter.
Musically, Psychic Lines builds Horror Comedy out of doctored drum samples, throbbing bass, baritone vocals, frantic guitar, and a saxophone that barges in like a drunk uncle at a zoning meeting. Some of the track’s electronic bones were made with early 90s 8-bit software, giving the whole affair a cheap-machine charm, as if a Game Boy had been locked in a bunker with cable news and several bad ideas. Jacob’s voice keeps its cool while the room starts sprouting teeth, which is exactly the right move. Panic is always funnier when delivered by someone who sounds like he has already read the autopsy.
The animated video by BPMT Studios pushes the song’s paranoia into a rotten fruit cartoon universe: psychedelic, creepy, and full of early-70s funk-animation freakery. Jacob, in a Hawaiian shirt, channel-surfs his way into a They Live-style revelation, catching glimpses of politics, entertainment, and the military-industrial complex grinning back from the screen like old reptiles with fresh veneers. Are we run by Reptilians? Are we living in a nightmare? Are we on the wrong timeline? Maybe, maybe, and buddy, check the receipt. Horror Comedy laughs with its teeth clenched, the sort of song that understands doom plays better when the sax shows up and the cartoon blood is just a little too red.
Watch below:
Horror Comedy is the title track from Psychic Lines’ forthcoming album, out May 15th. Pre-order it here.
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The post “A Joke On My Own Epitaph” — Brooklyn’s Psychic Lines Navigates Our Absurd Reality in Animated Video for “Horror Comedy” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.
