Del Water Gap | Don't Get Dark
Family Average: 5/7
You might be thinking to yourself. “Hey I know that whale”. If this is the case allow me to confirm your suspicions. Yes that is the whale from the hit summer blockbuster “Air Bud Meets The Free Willies”. “What is it doing here?” you might also be asking. Well it also happens to be the album cover to this stellar album by Del Water Gap. Don’t Get Dark is the name of the record and it is a heck of a time. You will laugh you will cry. We did. Don’t believe me? Look below and see what the family had to say.
Hey I went camping along the Del Water Gap. These songs felt a little bit like being back there that day. Waking up to sunshine poking through the tent and Serge’s hand poking out of his sleeping bag to hold mine. Like sitting next to the fire with him and friends while we ate and drank and laughed and eventually watched a few of them swim in the Delaware river in the moonlight. Like running around drunk and happy and sad at the same time in the dark in the mud. Looking for firewood by ourselves on a foggy morning. I don’t know if that makes sense but it felt a whole lot like that.
These lyrics are truly an inspiration. “Fall back out of love//Take too many drugs//Leave all the rest up to question//Just to find that you ain’t young enough//And when I’m feeling sad//Just remember that//I’ve got songs to hide behind until the feelings pass//It ain’t much of a life//But maybe once or twice//I’ve felt magic touching pen to paper in my time”
The sound is something in the pockets of 90s alt rock that he dove into and made his own. He stretched it out, howled and scrawled. He experimented with percussion and ethereal sounds. Instruments come and go as they please until all of sudden they’re all there and all in line doing what they need to do. “To Philly” is a great example of this.
No complaints here. Makes me want to have a camping party on a brooklyn rooftop.
6/7
Subtle, tender realness. A soft and slow hurt. The realness come from moments like “you lift up your hips for me to help me take it off.” The hurt comes from the tone of his voice.
A folky, indie, memory provoking album we have here. Little bits of country twang in tracks like, “Theory of Emotion.”
I like really like that noise on the track “Chastain.” I don’t know how to describe it; at first it was like hanging up
a home phone but I’m not really sure. Anyway it's drawing, I like it.
“To Philly” is extraordinary. The music wow, and his voice, those sweet high notes he hits. I like this a lot. It takes me places.
A beauty.
5/7
Hello sad boy indie folk acoustic alternative music. No surprise I'm sure, but this music is my standard fodder. I love a good harmony, some soft percussion, a couple of guitar licks, and a bit of romantic introspection.
At surface these songs seem quite simple -- boy with guitar is a classic indie alt folk situation -- but this feels more complex. With heavy guitar tempered by gentle vocals, it seamless blends the hard and the soft. Tracks open delicately before breaking and building into more grooving moments of instrumentation. I appreciated the breaks of paced guitar solos, giving the mind a moment to wander and float along. Lyrically, there's a bit of humor, a bit of melancholy, and a bit of romance coursing through. Delving into some universally shared emotion, they're really quite sweet and tug at the old heartstrings. Much of it felt like a serenade.
Overall, I found the album to be genuinely sweet and and kinda quirky. Will def listen again. Soon.
5/7