Human Barbie – ‘Get A Life’

Christopher Leopold has been producing and playing music in bands around Los Angeles for a while now, and he currently fronts Human Barbie, from which he’s released his solo bedroom indie-pop album, ‘Get A Life’. The title track is, in the words of Leopold himself, a “snapshot of one person’s experience of confusion, sadness, and resolve.”

With all songs recorded to tape by Leopold himself, who then mixed it, making sure all the effects, reverb and performance techniques were analogue, it’s an album that doesn’t just *feel* authentic, it’s the real thing, 100%. And just like the project’s namesake, there’s a sort of distorted beauty to the set. The title track, from its very opening stanza, is gorgeous yet tragic. Beautiful instrumentation and sublime vocals are paired with lyrics that suggest that maybe the struggle of it all isn’t really worth it. But at the same time as Leopold is telling us there’s no point trying to have it all – to make a plan but never get it done – he offers us a ray of hope in that we can actually enjoy ourselves a lot more, when we just decide instead to “get a life”.

‘Get A Life’ offers us the choice. We can stay in the rat race, the endless circuit that just keeps us eating our tail like the ouroboros snake, turning ourselves inside out in order to “get ahead”, or we can rather re-assess it all and realise we’ve got it good just simply by being alive, and we don’t have to be better: we’re already winners. We need to get a life, like everyone.

The lush music video accompanying ‘Get A Life’, comes from the film, ‘Life Of Ed’, which serves as a cinematic companion to Human Barbie’s album, ‘Get A Life’.

‘Get A Life’ was released on 30 June through Poor Man’s Records. You can find Human Barbie online on Facebook, and Instagram.