If you follow this blog on even a semi-regular basis then you’ll have learned by now that I quite like sad songs written by young men and women in their bedrooms. This little EP of demos from Shipwrecks is another collection of them, and a pretty good example of it at that. Shipwrecks is the songwriting project of Johnny Fabrizio, a project which we featured a few years back on our Best Free Music List. unknown demos is the first thing he has posted to his Bandcamp page since 2012, and it’s nice to hear something new from him. As the title suggests, these are rough demos rather than the finished article, and are intended to precede an album at some point in the future. But I’ve been listening to the EP on repeat for a few days and felt like writing something about it, regardless of how rough it is. The fact is, this genre of DIY folk / bedroom pop is about a lot more than aesthetics, so crisp recordings and polished production are, in my mind at least, pretty insignificant.
So what we get are six songs recorded quickly and in (presumably) humble surroundings. But we also get heartfelt songwriting from a young man who quite obviously means it. My current favourite track is ‘24’, a melancholy song that longs for a better time while being stuck in a city. “I went to the one place in the city where I could hear myself think,” Fabrizio sings, before detailing trips (with a significant other) to simpler places, driving to South Dakota, walking in the mountains, seeing the Pacific for the first time. It closes with the line ’at 24 I feel like a ghost.’ You can hear in the player below:
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/158589576″]
You can download unknown demos on a name-your-price basis via the Shipwrecks Bandcamp page.
P.S. If you are not familiar with his previous releases, check them out here.