{"id":31342,"date":"2025-08-17T08:35:18","date_gmt":"2025-08-17T08:35:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/indiedockmusicblog.co.uk\/?p=31342"},"modified":"2025-08-17T08:36:40","modified_gmt":"2025-08-17T08:36:40","slug":"make-believe-love-delay-deny-depose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/indiedockmusicblog.co.uk\/?p=31342","title":{"rendered":"Make Believe Love\u00a0&#8211; Delay Deny Depose"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n<br><p>The track itself bristles with contradictions that somehow coalesce into coherence. Berman&#8217;s twangy guitar work cuts through the mix with serrated precision, while his SNES-era synth arrangements conjure the fevered dreams of a Generation X shut-in raised on equal measures of Joy Division and Super Mario World. Producer Louie Diller has crafted a sonic palette that feels simultaneously retro and urgent\u2014an indie-rock blast that weaponizes nostalgia with surgical accuracy.<\/p><br><p>Lyrically, Berman navigates the treacherous waters of political commentary with the dexterity of a seasoned provocateur. His narrative follows Luigi Mangione&#8217;s surreal transformation from maligned patient to headline-grabbing vigilante\u2014a trajectory traced without endorsement but with unflinching fascination. The hooks that bind this tale together possess genuine barbs; they lodge themselves in your consciousness before you&#8217;ve fully processed their venom. It&#8217;s pop music as Trojan horse\u2014sweet enough to slip past your defenses, sharp enough to draw blood.<\/p><span style=\"background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);\"><br><\/span><p><span style=\"background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);\">The accompanying music video proves equally uncompromising. By recasting Mario as an unlikely avatar of corporate vengeance, Berman transforms childhood iconography into something far more sinister. The 16-bit aesthetic becomes a language of protest, pixels arranged into patterns of discontent. It&#8217;s both deeply silly and profoundly unsettling\u2014precisely the sort of cognitive dissonance that marks genuinely subversive art.<\/span><\/p><span style=\"background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);\"><br><\/span><p><span style=\"background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);\">The project extends beyond mere music into guerrilla theater. An LA wildposting campaign and the September 4th benefit show for Mangione&#8217;s legal defense fund transform artistic statement into direct action. This isn&#8217;t just commentary on the algorithm\u2014it&#8217;s a lo-fi scream hurled directly at its mechanical heart. Berman understands that sometimes the most honest response to systemic absurdity is to amplify it through equally absurd channels.<\/span><\/p><span style=\"color: rgb(255, 255, 255);\"><br><\/span><p><span style=\"background-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(255, 255, 255);\">Make Believe Love has crafted something genuinely rare: political pop music that trusts its audience enough to present complex ideas without patronizing explanations. In a cultural landscape increasingly dominated by algorithmic blandness, such bold gestures feel not just welcome but essential. Berman may be playing with fire, but at least he&#8217;s brought marshmallows.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n<a href=\"https:\/\/makebelievelove.com\/\">https:\/\/makebelievelove.com\/<\/a>\n\n\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Make Believe Love - Delay Deny Depose (Official Video)\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zpExs_xFgzQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n<p><iframe title=\"Spotify Embed: Delay Deny Depose\" style=\"border-radius: 12px\" width=\"100%\" height=\"352\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/album\/2UaIKURDk4lA8qfjFyTFlW?utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lucas Berman possesses the sort of mordant wit that transforms tragedy into teatime conversation. His latest offering as Make Believe Love, &#8220;Delay Deny Depose,&#8221; arrives with the subtlety of a brick through a boardroom window\u2014and proves twice as effective.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31343,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[18,9],"class_list":["post-31342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-video-reviews","tag-indie-rock","tag-usa"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/indiedockmusicblog.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/YourArtwork.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/indiedockmusicblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/indiedockmusicblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/indiedockmusicblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indiedockmusicblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indiedockmusicblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31342"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/indiedockmusicblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31346,"href":"https:\/\/indiedockmusicblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31342\/revisions\/31346"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indiedockmusicblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/indiedockmusicblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indiedockmusicblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indiedockmusicblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}