Have a Nice Life’s debut album “Deathconciousness” is in a word, sad. It may be the saddest album ever made. It may be the saddest music ever produced. In short, it’s the saddest and baddest album released past 2001.

I’m a little late on the draw for the actual release of the album. It came out in 2009… and originally it didn’t make a huge splash upon release and you probably haven’t heard of it, but it’s sad, I’ll say that.

It’s sad and it’s gloomy and it’s painful and it’s depressing. I’ve been listening to it over and over lately and there’s something about the droning, sweeping and broken squeeze of the album… a shoegaze mixture of post-punk and drone.

This isn’t so much a review, since the album came out close to a decade ago, but it’s been on my mind and has really been prodding at my sense of art and what art is. “Deathconciousness” was recorded in a bedroom. No studio, no special artists, just two dudes and a drum machine creating the saddest gut-wrenching music ever made. We’re all artists.

Art, at its basic form, is self-expression. It’s the language of consciousness. Religious icons and cave drawings both come from the same part of the human id that cries out: “HEAR ME, I AM REAL, I HAVE FEELINGS, I WANT YOU TO SHARE MY FEELINGS, HELP ME HELP YOU FEEL WHAT I FEEL.”

Since the earliest days of humanity and the human social condition, we’ve been doing it. When children write on the wall, and when depressed crooners pour out their hearts from dusty victrollas, they’re doing one of the things man inherited from that grand providence: the ability to express. The ability to say, “PAY ATTENTION TO ME.” Maybe we’re hurting, maybe we’re happy, overjoyed, depressed, bored, angry, aroused, feeling confident, feeling ugly. We’re all artists. Somehow, we find a way to express ourselves in a way the spoken word simply can’t, and God bless those who find the time and courage to do so. We’re all artists.