Walking into Patricia’s New York City apartment is quite possibly the closest you can get to travelling back in time. Unchanged since the 1950s, Del Water Gap (aka Holden Jaffe)’s 98-year-old grandmother has (perhaps accidentally) created a time capsule — from the 50s furniture to 1970s books to a 1990s-level internet connection. The highlight is her late husband’s study, where Holden sleeps when he visits. “It’s this beautiful, dimly lit wooden room and there’s bookshelves on every wall,” he tells me over Zoom, sitting outside on a sunny California morning. They’re organised by theme, from classical music to Buddishm to tourist guides to poetry.
“A few months ago, I was in [the study] and I saw this anthology of William Carlos Williams,” he continues. “His most famous poem is in the style of a note that someone is leaving, presumably on a kitchen counter, and it’s basically an apology note that says, ‘I’m sorry I ate the plums that were in the fridge.’ I opened to this poem and on top, written in pencil, is my grandmother’s name. And at the bottom, ‘love, David. I miss you already and I haven’t left yet.’”
A story of transience, from album to album, show to show, year to year, Del Water Gap’s sophomore studio album highlights the moments between the (supposedly) grand, monumental events. Through imagery of hotel rooms and train cars, he captures the temporality of the twenty-something years — and the places we find ourselves on the way to somewhere new. It is the space between falling in love and breaking your heart, between the version of you that’s projected to the world and the identity you’re still trying to figure out, between the high-highs and the low-lows, left and right, North and South, here and there. Painting a picture of motion and stillness through hyper-visual language and raw emotion, he has conquered the daunting task of the second album and solidified his corner of the alt-pop world. Cinematic, personal, and utterly his own, the masterpiece of I Miss You Already + I Haven’t Left Yet somehow transcends time itself — with 12 tracks that land somewhere between nostalgic classics and contemporary anthems.
“I felt like I had to relearn how to be an artist on this album, which was a daunting process at first,” he shares. “People say you have your whole life to make your first album. I think I felt that coming into my second album.”
While his debut, self-titled album was a compilation of five or six years-worth of stories — including breakthrough single “Ode to a Conversation Stuck in Your Throat” — this next project was finished in a fifth of the time. “I came out of that album release and out of the pandemic into about three years of touring and a lot of travel and a lot of new experiences and a lot of new relationships and creative partnerships. And my window to make my second album was very small, just as a result of my lifestyle. I initially wanted to try to make my album on tour, which was very ambitious, a little overambitious.” Holden laughs, recalling the overwhelming task and subsequent breakdowns over non-related topics, such as whether to eat before or after the show. Thankfully, the pressure was lifted from his shoulders with a tour cancellation, and he was able to regroup at home and start fresh. Dipping back into the unnamed second album, he started working with producers Sammy Witte, Ethan Gruska, Gabe Goodman, and Mike Malchicoff on what would become his greatest project yet.
While he didn’t go into the album with a crystal-clear idea for a narrative, he certainly knew he wanted it to feel like himself and the past year or so of his life. “Going into it, my goal was just to tell the truth and try to form a complete statement and an accurate representation of my life in a specific time,” he shares. Touching on themes of romantic commitment, masculinity, self-perception, and existential dread, he explores the idea of connection whilst figuring yourself out, asks questions surrounding ambivalence and trying to make meaning from mundane moments, and finds a way to be okay without knowing all the answers.
“A lot of life for me right now is not the high highs and the low lows, and a lot of the album is about trying to make sense of that feeling,” he explains. “How do you face this perpetual narrative of what it feels like to be in your body looking out into the world and moving through your day and trying to make meaning and sense of it — of your work and life and relationships?”
The first single, “All We Ever Do Is Talk”, was one of the first written for the album, and fittingly serves as the opening song on the track-list. A marker of the new chapter of his artistry, or a “pacer for the rest of the album” according to the artist, it set the scene with themes of movement and travel — both physically and figuratively. Introducing the world to the past year or so of his life, the single opened up a whole new visual language and cinematic universe within the realm of Del Water Gap’s discography. “We made that song and it was the first song where I thought, ‘okay, yeah, this sounds like me. This sounds like a Del Water Gap album two.’”
“I focused a lot on the ways that we try to regulate when everything is moving around us, when the world is moving, when relationships are moving, when you’re sleeping in a different place every night and you lose the little parts of your routine that make you who you are, what do you reach for to try and solidify?”
It’s difficult to pick a standout track on the album, but “Want It All” is one that Holden is particularly proud of. “There’s a couple times a year when I sit down to write and I feel like a lightning bolt hits my head and the song just comes through me and comes out of my hands and it’s done before I know it. It only happens one or two times a year and this song was one of those times.”
A song about the overwhelming, contradicting voices in your head — the ones simultaneously telling you to work yourself into the ground and to let it all go — and the fear of indecision over which to listen to, it captures the artist’s inner dialogue. In Holden’s own words, “it’s a song about indecision and obsession and vacillating between wanting to strive for greatness and wanting to strive for having the simplest existence possible.” Exploring tunnel vision, the struggle to stay present, and striving to enjoy moments without overthinking them, its beautifully raw lyrics show Holden at his best.
Although the vulnerability may have been difficult for him to put out into the world, it was also what excited him about the track. “I find that songs really are living, breathing organisms and when you put them out they don’t belong to you anymore,” he explains. They sort of walk out on their own and they come to mean different things to different people. I think as a writer that can be a very inspiring process and it has been for me. I think a song means one thing and then when I go on tour and play it for a few months, it’s mirrored back to me as a completely different song. I’ve always really loved that — there’s a bit of a loss of control that I find really comforting. It’s a bit of a trust fall.”
Open-ended, the album is full of songs waiting to find homes in the listeners to come for generations and generations. Often feeling like they’re ending “in the middle of a sentence”, as Holden describes them, they provide a snapshot and time-capsule into the artist’s life at a fleeting moment of existence — not unlike the long-lost love note he found written in his grandfather’s hand.
“I went to my grandmother and said, ‘hey, do you mind if I use this for my album name?’” He laughs. “She said, ‘you can use it, but I think it’s a terrible name.”
I Miss You Already + I Haven’t Left Yet is out now.