Ten minute tea with Afternoon Tea. Spend ten minutes with Afternoon Tea. In the time it takes to boil one kettle, and let one cup of tea steep, we will have your daily art + music fix covered. Take your afternoon tea break with our Afternoon Tea curators.
Today’s tea + soundtrack + visuals curated by The Dream Eaters.
Since 2015, The Dream Eaters have evolved from a dream pop band into a full-on video art project with an extensive catalog of weird and darkly humorous music videos of their catchy pop songs, growing a cult fanbase. The duo started working together after vocalist Elizabeth LeBaron, originally from Calgary, started working at the same bar as singer/songwriter Jake Zavracky, originally from Boston, in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY.
At face value, “mood pills” simply refers to a pill one takes to enhance their mood. The song deals with what that does to a relationship – how it affects the overall dynamic of a relationship when one person is taking a mood-altering drug and the sexual dysfunction that comes from taking psychiatric drugs.
Stream + share “mood pills” now:
“I was diagnosed with depression in 2021 and it took a few tries to figure out what medication worked for me,” explains Elizabeth LeBaron. “Those first few months of navigating how it affected my relationships felt a lot like what this song is saying.”
I don’t know if this has to be in order and the tea has to go last, if that’s part of the rules, but I’m putting it first because the tea is setting up the basis for the other choices. My favorite tea is the best tea in the universe and I don’t even really want to promote it because I worry that once the word is out I won’t be able to get it anymore. It’s Rishi’s ginger turmeric tea. You might be saying “That sounds totally gross, Jake, I don’t want to drink turmeric plus every teacup in my house is going to have yellow turmeric stains. I’m never speaking to you again”. But trust me it is NOT GROSS. It is the best tea. Everyone I give it to thinks so.
So now that I’m drinking the tea I’m thinking about turmeric and how it’s used in the celebration of the Bhandara festival, where people cover themselves in it and give themselves an other-worldly golden glow. And it makes me think of the other-worldly sounds Jimi Hendrix produced from his guitar on his second album “Axis: Bold As Love”. As the song fades out, continue to turn up the volume and hear some of his best guitar playing as he sprays glowing color all over the sonic canvas.
And now that we’re hearing glowing colors we should be immersed in a Yayoi Kusama piece so that we’re also seeing those colors, and if you can’t physically go to one of her exhibits you can at least look at her work online. I think the yellow orange giant polka dotted quasi-octopus (I think it’s an octopus) works particularly well here. If you CAN physically go to one you should do that right now.
Tea + Me 