Adult DVD celebrate their signing to renowned independent label Fat Possum with the release of ‘Real Tree Lee’, a song nearly as exciting as its accompanying video.
Humourising the image of toxic masculinity that currently saturates internet platforms, Adult DVD’s new single narrates the story of a man called Lee. As the band put it, “Lee is a guy that we never want to become, let’s make that clear!” Lee is the product of online additives and an overconsumption of what the band call “the cretin side of the internet”. Exposure to ‘brainrot’, the Oxford word of the year in 2024, has left Lee in a state of cognitive decline. He engages in activities driven by online conspiracy theories and radical narratives that offer short-lived gratification but ultimately lack fulfilment, resulting in a spiral that sees the protagonist blowing up his shed.
Behind Lee are a series of brief, incomplete endeavours, sparked by overstimulating Reddit forums which have eroded his ability to consume long content and has depleted his abilities to engage meaningfully with real life activities.
Narrating the story of Lee’s social and cognitive decline are the deliberately monotonous vocals of frontman Harry Hanson. Hanson lists Real Tree Lee’s numerous inane lifestyle choices, that display an obsession with preparedness but an inability for preparation: “he owns a lot of guns but never learned to shoot”; “taking his kids out of school”; “Real Tree Lee only parties in his bunker”; while acidic instrumentals complete a hallucinogenic immersion into Lee’s chaos.
The electronic soundscape provides a backing track as syncopated as Lee’s life is crazy. With three of six members of Adult DVD contributing on synths, their music was bound to lean into the electronically absurd. You can imagine the trio standing hunched over a table packed with wires and soundboards, making careful adjustments to the output, looking like sci-fi fanatics translating extraterrestrial frequencies through a bootleg radio telescope. Sometimes the noises are scarcely intelligible, echoing the mental static of online radicalisation and the rabbit-hole ramble of some bloke stuck in an echo chamber.
The track detonates and crashes into a synth-led finale of gargling distortion equally suited to a frenzied club dancefloor or Lee’s imagined bunker. Overall, ‘Real Tree Lee’ is a bouncing, grooving commentary on the unfortunate state of men raised more by Reddit than reality.
Photo by Devon Chambers
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