BSH Saturday Music Club: Del Water Gap

Del Water Gap - Del Water Gap

The Saturday Music Club cycle resets, and today we\'re diving into Del Water Gap’s self titled debut full length.

This album was, to say the least, a long time coming. It was nearly a decade of releasing music under the Del Water Gap moniker – a period which saw S. Holden Jaffe become, in my mind, something of an honorary Philly Artist with how often he seemed to make the trip down from New York to play tiny shows (and aided by the inclusion of “To Philly,” a ballad about falling in love with a girl from Philadelphia, on one of those early EPs) – before its release in 2021, but it was deeply worth the wait.

As a, what one might call, Olympic caliber yearner, Del Water Gap’s music really speaks to me, and specifically this album, which is a masterclass in it, in all of its forms. From the lightness, the possibility of having a crush (such as on “Perfume”), to the frenetic energy, the abandon of professing long-held feelings (“Ode To A Conversation Stuck In Your Throat”), to the ache from having lost it in the end (“It’s Not Fair !”), we really run the gambit in terms of settings and tone. But, all the same, we keep returning to one old feeling, a common through-line. Just before the hallway point of the album, “Alone Together” offers up something of its thesis: “what would you do for love, now that you found it?”

The answer, we come to see, is anything. We’ll pine, we’ll give ourselves away just to be known, we’ll accept half measures and hurt, if that’s what it takes. In truth, this album makes me think a lot about something Phoebe Bridgers said in describing her “Moon Song” – that it’s about a “wanting to be stepped on feeling,” or rather, wanting someone to treat you badly because at least they’ll treat you at all.

This album threads an interesting needle for me – it has its complement of fun and upbeat songs that I just want to blast in the car, but still enough quiet, introspective moments to sit with when I need them.

-Maddie

Jason M: Heard of this artist faintly before. It\'s the first time for this album, and isn\'t it a lovely little piece of work? \"Better Than I Know Myself\" is chipper, highbrow pop hitting all the right buttons. And it\'s not just one and done as Mr. Water Gap (I know, it\'s not his surname....) has plenty of ear worms and ear candy with the folksy, singer-songwriter tone of \"Distance\" or during \"Sorry I Am,\" the latter sounding a wee bit like Travis. The poly rhythms are so sweet here as \"Perfume\" would give XTC or Vampire Weekend a run for their money.

Regardless of the arrangement, whether pedestrian-paced or up-tempo, Del Water Gap slips into the groove of \"Alone Together\" and the wordy but well-woven \"Ode to a Conversation Stuck in Your Throat.\" The highlight from this vantage point is the tender but terrific \"It\'s Not Fair !\" The first 10 songs are top tier while \"Bug Bites\" has its moments and is more of a grower to these ears. Overall it\'s a huge, two thumbs up uh-huh from me for Del (I know, it\'s not his first name....).

Joe D : “Olympic level yearner” is an outstanding phrase–and an apt descriptor for Del Water Gap’s music and self-titled album. It’s almost too much, but…it works? The melodies and lyrical cadences of “Perfume” are outstanding, “Ode to a Conversation Stuck in Your Throat” pulses with passion and reckoning, and opener “Better Than I Know Myself” has a buoyancy to it that locks you in from the jump. A big thing for me in music is urgency: that a song has to be played right fucking now and if it isn’t then the artist is going to spontaneously combust from the erratic energy of the emotions, melody, lyrics contained within them–and the bulk of Del Water Gap fits that mold. The album’s at its best when it’s upbeat, but drags a bit during the slower songs.

I hear a lot of DWG’s contemporaries here, too: “Bug Bites” might not be out of place on a Billie Eilish LP, a Mitski cover of “Ode to a Conversation” would go hard, and there’s some homage to Beck on the sound of “Distance.” Still, I can’t help but feel I missed the boat a bit; a lot of DWG’s songs would be perfect as ~mysterious~ Facebook statuses/Tumblr posts directed at a specific reader…if it were still 2010. C’mon, all of us who were teenagers in the aughties made those posts–or at least set lyrics as AOL Away messages. I don’t connect with his music the way I would’ve a decade ago, but regardless, there are some bops here. Might even have to queue “Ode” or “Perfume” on TouchTunes at some point this weekend.

Thomas: Man, this record kind of led me on an adolescent trip. Maybe it is just because I have not been keeping up with the latest alternative pop, but Del Water Gap certainly feels like a collection of songs one man has written over decades. It isn’t in a bad way, but it is like a mosaic of influences splattered all over one work, and each separate song and its own sound brought me to a place where it would be so fitting.

“Better Than I Know Myself” was immediately what I am dubbing as my own personal Osheaga-core – the result of what I would hear walking around the music festival up in Montreal that I went to regularly. That dancey-but-not-supposed-to-be-dancey chorus would be heard off in the distance as I mucked through some thick grimey mud. While, on the other hand, tracks like “Distance” and “It’s Not Fair !” feel so raw and gritty that I would have connected to it so much in high school. As I was in my Tigers Jaw, Title Fight, Basement, Balance and Composure Era; the bedroom emo folky sound would have held me so tight.

Even with songs like “Uh-huh”, it certainly feels like you’re getting right to the core of the artist and what he wants to do. Maybe that’s the thing with first records – the pressure to have a banger or two and Del Water Gap led with those, and finished with the guttural blows.

https://open.spotify.com/album/22ljnmjYzy4TS5tCtaRIUE?si=_lrIx_pCRqWJfAzHP63o2A

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