Joseph Shipp
Free, For A While
Self Released
28 October 2022
A Tennessee native, after six years in the Bay Area, Joseph Shipp and his wife relocated back east to Nashville and became parents; the period that followed provided the grist for this album, which opens with the nasally sung and decidedly pessimistic Rest Assured (“Nobody’s going to help you now/You’re on your own /No mom or dad to help you through/The dark nights and the hot days/And the temperature keeps rising”), where in the Bible belt “They sing hymns at home to the walls/And the ceiling bends down when He calls/But you’re still standing in the river/Freezing your balls off/Waiting for a sign”.
The theme of helplessness and isolation continues into the ringing folk-rock Where You Are, which, opening with what sounds like a storm sweeping through, deals with societal anxiety (“You only left the house once in three whole years/When you moved back to your hometown to face your fears/You’re a king of a small world/Or a bird in a cage that flew right in”) and the way it can become contagious (“My head is full of these ideas of you/But I know that really ain’t who you are/It’s just what I see reflected back at me/And that might be the hardest part”).
Though it might not sound it, with its dustbowl folk arrangement, electric guitar break, striding rhythm and thumping drums, Green Grows the Laurel is a traditional British folk song, Shipp giving it a male perspective (“Though she hates and detests me/I love that girl still/I lied to you / about how I feel”).
A bluesy downbeat organ-based slow march with snarly guitars and tinges of The Band, Only the Moon is about losing someone close to you and trying to make sense of things (“We were camping once/In the Appalachians…You made a comment/That I can’t seem to shake/Concerning your happiness/And your frequent headaches”), the musical mood shifting to the light fingerpicking of the Tom Petty-like American Man, that began life as a satirical song about stereotypical small town southern American hyper-masculinity, but mutated into something more complex about identity (“I’m an American man/Land of the free/I’m an American man/Should’ve joined the Marines /I’m an American man/Blow it all to smithereens/I’m an American man/Whatever that means”).
There’s a similar undercurrent in the equally chiming swagger of Turned Into Someone Else, which unfolds the tale of a guy who breaks up with his girl thinking it will give him time for himself (“Just wanna be me for a while”) only to find she doesn’t fall apart (“What I could not see/Was how much she would change”) while he ends up alone and miserable (“Woke up in Vietnam/It’s been raining here for days…I’m looking out to sea/I just think of her and cry”).
Returning to their move, the whiningly sung mid-tempo 550 Sq Ft is a love song to his wife and the apartment they left behind in San Francisco (“The hardest thing we did/Was walk away from it/With salt-streaked cheeks/And a long silent drive”) and the difficulty of letting it go and starting anew (“When we asked for a new start/Never thought it’d be this hard”), toy drums underscoring a reference to their young son as he sings “Remember how far we’ve come/From that five hundred fifty square feet of love”.
A totally solo track with Shipp playing all the guitars, Late October Mist is a true story, written about taking a backpacking trip with a friend, both their wives expecting their second child and the presidential elections looming, the sense of reconnecting with nature balanced by the uncertainty of the future.
Drawing on the folk tradition but filtering the sparseness through a heavier slow burn groove with metal guitars, the six-minute plus dod can be read either as a cautionary tale of a dark-hearted woman (“She feeds on feelings/Purity, and fidelity/You’re lucky if when you meet her/She lets you keep your sanity”) or a nihilistic vision of life (“Money rots your soul/And leaders lie/All rivers will flood/All in good time/Friends will disappoint you/All babies someday die”).
Opening with a field recording of preaching the holy spirit and featuring omnichord, a similar theme pervades the discordant Beast In The Attic, something he describes as “a Brother’s Grimm-type folk tale or a fucked up lullaby” that draws on his childhood experience of night terrors, his experience of seeing shape-shifting demons in his room translated into the nightmares of the modern world.
It ends in simple acoustic mode with Lonely Youth, bittersweet memories of growing up an only child envious of others with siblings, the lone guitar and voice accompanied by parakeet tweets, as, while he had love and affection, he recalls the pressure of carrying his parent’s hopes alone, its manifestation in depression in later years and how it “shaped me into who I am”, always feeling alone in a crowd.
A creative director, designer and photographer, at 40, Joseph Shipp is only now stepping out into a new career as a singer-songwriter with this debut album; unquestionably, it’s one of the year’s best.
Order Free, For A While via Bandcamp: https://josephshipp.bandcamp.com/album/free-for-a-while