Nap Eyes' latest LP, Snapshot of a Beginner, remains one of Exclaim!'s 33 Best Albums of 2020 So Far, and the East coast outfit have now delivered a pair of B-sides from the album.
Both "Snake Oil" and "Child's Romance" arrive today with found footage visualizers you can take in below. Vocalist Nigel Chapman holds the former as "kind of a contradiction or riddle," while the latter is "child-like in that it's expressing admiration and affection for another person, but without any romantic-relationship-oriented ulterior motives."
"'Snake oil' is a well-known idiom of course, for which everyone will have their own associations, and no doubt anyone listening today will be able to find some apropos uses for it," Chapman explains in a statement, adding of its quizzical nature, "whatever this 'snake oil' literally represents, the singer is apparently brewing and stewing it as some kind of sustenance. Who knows what that might mean...it's a riddle even to me, but I wonder could it have something to do with the dangers at the opposite extreme of the gullibility spectrum—those of hyper-skepticism...?"
Of "Child's Romance," the frontman recalled, "After writing it I was thinking it's maybe a bit like the 'courtly love' attitude expressed in medieval literature (the early/original 'Romances'), which is a slightly outlandish combination of aesthetics, idealism, and passion. On another level, I think the song is about learning, as we grow up, to differentiate between feelings of romantic love and more friendly admiration and warmth that we feel towards others. The following should go without saying of course, but it's definitely necessary to make room for both kinds of feelings in our psychology—rather than expecting ourselves to feel only one or the other."
Snapshot of a Beginner is out now through Royal Mountain Records/Jagjaguwar, and you can read Exclaim!'s interview with the band here. We also recently dubbed drummer Seamus Dalton a Canadian Cannabis Hero.
Both "Snake Oil" and "Child's Romance" arrive today with found footage visualizers you can take in below. Vocalist Nigel Chapman holds the former as "kind of a contradiction or riddle," while the latter is "child-like in that it's expressing admiration and affection for another person, but without any romantic-relationship-oriented ulterior motives."
"'Snake oil' is a well-known idiom of course, for which everyone will have their own associations, and no doubt anyone listening today will be able to find some apropos uses for it," Chapman explains in a statement, adding of its quizzical nature, "whatever this 'snake oil' literally represents, the singer is apparently brewing and stewing it as some kind of sustenance. Who knows what that might mean...it's a riddle even to me, but I wonder could it have something to do with the dangers at the opposite extreme of the gullibility spectrum—those of hyper-skepticism...?"
Of "Child's Romance," the frontman recalled, "After writing it I was thinking it's maybe a bit like the 'courtly love' attitude expressed in medieval literature (the early/original 'Romances'), which is a slightly outlandish combination of aesthetics, idealism, and passion. On another level, I think the song is about learning, as we grow up, to differentiate between feelings of romantic love and more friendly admiration and warmth that we feel towards others. The following should go without saying of course, but it's definitely necessary to make room for both kinds of feelings in our psychology—rather than expecting ourselves to feel only one or the other."
Snapshot of a Beginner is out now through Royal Mountain Records/Jagjaguwar, and you can read Exclaim!'s interview with the band here. We also recently dubbed drummer Seamus Dalton a Canadian Cannabis Hero.