Wipe the dreariness from your eyes as they continue to rest through winter’s slumber and perk up your ears with intrigue and familiarity as Nap Eyes have quickly put their mark on the new decade. The Halifax, Nova Scotia staple dropped “Mark Zuckerberg,” a satirical single that will land as the fourth track on their newly announced album, Snapshot Of A Beginner, due out March 27, 2020 through Jagjaguwar. The record, releasing in partnership with Paradise of Bachelors and You’ve Changed Records, is available for pre-order here.
The release of “Mark Zuckerberg” was joined by a music video from director Techgod and animator Cole Kush. The video sees the band performing the song as cartoon ghosts looking like they are straight out of a Hanna Barbera television show with a disturbing animation of Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg — for lack of a better term — cutting up a rug.
Nap Eyes, who consist of a group of responsible renegades that includes Nigel Chapman (lead vocals, guitar), Brad Lougheed (guitar), Josh Salter (bass guitar), and Seamus Dalton (drums), have put out three albums to date: Whine of the Mystic (2014), Thought Rock Fish Scale (2016) and I’m Bad Now (2018), which featured one of the best guitar solos in recent memory on track #2, “I’m Bad.” From Boston to Brussels, Los Angeles to Liverpool, Nap Eyes will be touring for a large chunk of 2020. Many of the dates include opening for one of Vancouver’s favourite sons, Destroyer, who will be promoting some new music of his own.
Snapshot Of A Beginner will continue Nap Eyes' trend of one album every two years, yet this time around it feels a little different. This feeling is not just because their album artwork will not be done by Danika Vandersteen for the first time, but because it is a project where one can easily tell the band is maturing and materializing their ideas. This single truly embodies a band that does not define themselves by the public’s perception but rather embraces their quirkiness through songs about science, social media mavens, and maritime madness.
As their label suggests, Snapshot Of A Beginner is “one for the procrastinators and the slow learners” and I would certainly expect it to be their boldest album to date. While we have become accustomed to the "slow is steady" approach from Nap Eyes, it appears this LP will be a momentous step in the direction of “artistic zen.”
