Queens-based artist shepup might be the first songwriter we’ve come across to draw inspiration from working as a sludge ship engineer in New York Harbor, though the fact is central to debut double single Wave / Honey Barge, out now via Paper Moon Records. A pair of tracks in which dreamy introspection is brought to life with something more elemental. Human emotion and the push and pull of the sea.
Written over the course of a single day in Astoria Park, ‘Wave’ originated as a journal entry exploring an ostensibly inexplicable sense of dissatisfaction. shepup might have had it all—a dream job lined up and a happy relationship, not to mention time and space to focus on creative outlets too—yet some nagging unhappiness remained. The resulting song unpicks such emotions with a drifting, shifting sound able to evoke a sense of ephemerality. As though coming to understand discontent as part of an ever-changeable system of internal weather. “What is a wave when you take away its water?” asks the chorus, invoking both the cyclical nature of the human experience, but of the invisible forces which drive its patterns.
Follow-up ‘Honey Barge’ also takes inspiration from the day job, drawing its name directly from a slang term for a sludge tanker (that’s a ship that transports sewage). It and uses the image as a metaphor for those trapped with the suffocating routines of an unhappy relationship. With a sedate rhythm and nostalgic vocals somewhere between reflective and haunting, the song becomes a meditation on opting for familiarity over true satisfaction, with sounds from the tanker and other maritime recordings woven into the arrangement. Watch the video shot by Ian Dickey and edited by Fiona Carlsen below:
Wave / Honey Barge is out now via Paper Moon Records.