Reminiscing of your kiss
Can I taste your lips so sweet and
Candy Rocks, red and green
When cupid shot another arrow
The American candy shop has always been a magnificent fraud: a place where children are coaxed into lifelong chemical dependencies beneath the reassuring gaze of adults who see nothing strange in selling artificially colored sugar to anyone with a dollar. Somewhere between the taffy machine and the insulin prescription comes the latest confection from Virginia Beach art-rock eccentrics Reptile Tile, who join forces with Los Angeles synth-pop provocateur Geneva Jacuzzi on Candy Boy, a three-song EP concerned with romantic dysfunction, consumer addiction, and the magnificent foolishness of human desire.
Founded in 2015 by Roderick Edens, alias Terry Cloth, Reptile Tile belongs to that wonderfully diseased branch of American musical experimentation populated by Devo, Ween, The Residents, and assorted basement-dwelling lunatics who regard conventional song structures as invitations to commit minor acts of cultural vandalism.
The title track was originally written during the sessions for Jacuzzi’s Triple Fire, released by Dais Records in 2024, and is also slated to appear on Reptile Tile’s forthcoming full-length LP. For now, it heads a compact collaboration whose other two songs, Accessory and Cliche, explore more upbeat synth-pop territory while examining further complications of wanting things that might be bad for you.
A warm, rounded bassline gives Candy Boy its easy sway, while synths chime like softly struck bells through a light haze of electronics. Geneva Jacuzzi sings as though caught halfway between remembering a kiss and imagining the next one, her daydream delivery lending the song a deliciously dazed sweetness. Those airy textures soften the edges of her romantic fixation, making another taste sound like the most reasonable proposition in the world. Cupid, judging by the results, may have started dipping his arrows in something stronger than sugar.
The self-produced video was directed by Reptile Tile’s Andrew Briggs and shot on location in Virginia Beach by Taylor Casey. Its inspirations include neon noir films and the atmosphere of 1990s children’s television shows such as Are You Afraid of the Dark?, an appropriate combination for a story in which a brightly stocked candy shop conceals some highly questionable extracurricular chemistry. The song’s press release offers a useful warning: “Not everything is as it appears in the candy shop…”
Set on the Virginia Beach boardwalk, the video introduces Jacuzzi as an ingénue being tailed by a police officer investigating the rise of illegal “candy” along the strip. Edens plays the mustachioed officer, complete with mirrored sunglasses and a tendency to peer around corners. Jacuzzi, meanwhile, walks past the nighttime storefronts in a black leather jacket worn over her hot-pink strapless gown, an enormous jeweled necklace catching the light beneath her severe black bob. Her attention settles on the officer’s son, played by Lane Wills, a bespectacled candy-store employee whose white shirt and black apron suggest considerably more innocence than his workplace deserves.
Their flirtation develops among shelves of plush animals, oversized sweets, and brightly colored dispensers, with exchanged glances making the merchandise seem increasingly incidental. After their introduction, the Candy Boy leads Jacuzzi behind the counter and through an employees-only door, revealing a secret laboratory run by chemists played by Andrew Briggs and Chris Santiago. Bubbling glassware, clouds of vapor, and bright red, yellow, and blue liquids crowd the workbench as the clerk proudly shows his visitor around. Later close-ups reveal trays of translucent, pistol-shaped sweets, giving the confectionery business a particularly literal criminal accessory.
The laboratory romance alternates with performance scenes in a small room saturated with pink light. Here, Jacuzzi sheds the biker jacket and completes her ensemble with matching opera gloves, jeweled bracelets, and a pink tulle headpiece. The wardrobe pays homage to Madonna’s Material Girl video and, through that reference, Marilyn Monroe’s performance of Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend. Hands planted on her hips, she delivers coy sideways looks and exaggerated gestures at the microphone, bringing Hollywood glamour into considerably stranger company. Behind her, a keyboardist wears a laboratory coat and goggles, while the policeman plays bass, maintaining an admirably flexible interpretation of being on duty.
Back in the laboratory, attraction develops into an embrace before the clerk removes his apron and takes Jacuzzi outside. They emerge hand in hand into a smoke-filled alley, where bright backlighting turns their flirtation into a miniature movie romance. Their encounter against the wall is interrupted when his father appears with a flashlight. Jacuzzi promptly runs toward the camera, leaving the Candy Boy against the building as the pursuit resumes. Whatever the family’s position on illicit confectionery, the young man has chosen a spectacularly inconvenient place for a date.
Soft focus, overlapping images, long dissolves, and prismatic flashes give the action a pleasantly intoxicated appearance. Faces float across storefronts, laboratory colors bleed into romantic close-ups, and the pink performance footage dissolves into the alleyway chase. Glamour, infatuation, and suspicious confectionery all appear to be products of the same highly questionable chemistry experiment.
Reptile Tile and Geneva Jacuzzi give their confectionery caper a conspiratorial twist, posing a few questions best answered before anyone samples another batch:
“The video begs the questions…will the internet pilled generation always do as they’re told by the CIA? Will Geneva and the candy boy fall in love? And lastly, what is the secret ingredient being added to the candy that makes everyone want more?”
Watch the video for Candy Boy below:
Accessory, also co-written and sung by Geneva Jacuzzi, combines 1980s synth-pop with the sentimental architecture of 1950s doo-wop. Bright layers of synthesizer and an insistent beat frame the perspective of a trophy wife who has reached her breaking point, her decorative usefulness having finally exhausted her patience. Its buoyant electronics provide an appropriately ridiculous backdrop for a domestic rebellion, suggesting a suburban house party where somebody has spiked the punch with industrial-strength resentment.
Cliche ventures into heartbreak and self-fulfilling prophecy, its bashful vocal sitting atop a peculiar synth-pop tune surrounded by electronic flourishes and layers of drifting ambience. The band claims every lyric eventually came true, which should concern anybody contemplating writing an entire album about lottery winnings or romantic satisfaction.
The EP was recorded at Reptile Tile’s home studio, RTT Lab, mixed by Stephen Bement at Vox Studios, and mastered by Nick Bolton at Bolton Sounds. Picky Choosy Records is releasing Candy Boy as a digital single across streaming platforms, with a limited-edition magenta 7-inch vinyl release announced as coming soon through Bandcamp and Reptile Tile’s website.
Candy Boy offers three variations on humanity’s curious appetite for things that eventually make us miserable. The candy is suspicious, the relationships are deteriorating, and everybody seems entirely too enthusiastic about returning for another helping. Reptile Tile and Geneva Jacuzzi have concocted an entertaining little racket, exploiting that ancient human weakness for anything attractively packaged and potentially disastrous. The customers are hooked, the cops are closing in, and somewhere in the back room, somebody is already cooking up the next batch.
Listen to Candy Boy below and order the single here.
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The post Geneva Jacuzzi and Reptile Tile Concoct Confection-Laced Romance in Video for “Candy Boy” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.
