"Nausea" is the title track of Craft Spells' (the stage name of California's Justin Paul Vallesteros) second studio album - a title that may seem like an odd choice for such an understatedly beautiful track. As Pitchfork's Ian Cohen has noted, Vallesteros began his musical career with a guitar-centered 'bedroom pop' aesthetic, which seems well-suited to his thematic preoccupations with solitude, introspection and tentative forays into the spheres of romance and intimacy.
Cohen aptly observes that "The main appeal of Craft Spells is how the music gives the listener an ability to parse the many subtle differences in the various states of being by one’s self—there’s the attractive aspects (solitary, lone) and the not-so-attractive (isolated, lonely)".
"Nausea" explores the anxiety surrounding's one's choice to isolate himself from a familiar social milieu; Vallesteros' lyrical persona seems to be 'nauseated' by the 'not-so-attractive' aspects of a solitude:
'Nausea/ You’ve kept youself away from everyone you used knowNausea/ You brought yourself here now everybody’s gonna know'
Vallesteros' vocals accompany the song's easy-listening melody with ease, hinting at a melancholic dissonance caused by social disconnection and emotional inertia. The songs offers no solution or groundbreaking insight to this predicament, but the monochromatic, disembodied evocation of the asocial persona's anxieties are enough for a compelling listen:
'Is it so strangeIs it so strange to be aloneI wouldn’t listen for what it’s worthWatching the sky as it unfoldsBringing me back now, paranoiaGiving me something to give upMoving along now, it’s made me dizzyWatching the clouds as I go home'
P.S. If you prefer a visual accompaniment to the song, Youtuber David Dean Bukhart has made a DIY-aesthetic music video for "Nausea".
