Del Water Gap - Chasing the Chimera

Holden Jaffe has been quietly building Del Water Gap into one of indie’s more dependable names over the last few years; ‘Chasing the Chimera’, his third album, is where that work pays off. It takes the conversational, heart-on-sleeve songwriting he’s known for and stretches it into something more considered and widescreen, without losing the intimacy that made people care in the first place. Where previous Del Water Gap releases leaned on sharp, immediate indie-pop hooks, this record is in less of a hurry.

The opening run of ‘Marigolds’, ‘Small Town Joan of Arc’ and ‘How To Live’ sets the tone: warm guitars, unfussy drums, and arrangements that keep the focus squarely on Jaffe’s voice and lyrics. ‘Marigolds’ is a slow unravelling; ‘Joan of Arc’ sketches a vivid character study over a quietly propulsive groove; ‘How To Live’ finds a sweet spot between the two, wrapping big, existential questions in a melody tidy enough to lodge in your head before you’ve clocked quite how bleak it is.

That shift towards patience extends to the production. Working with long-time collaborator Gabe Goodman, Jaffe favours arrangements that feel lived-in rather than glossy. You get small details – a snatch of saxophone here, a choir-like backing vocal swell there – that deepen the atmosphere rather than competing for attention. Tracks like ‘Please Follow’ and ‘We Don’t Have To Take It Slow’ lean into this, moving between jazzy, late-night languor and bare-bones piano confessionals that feel one take away from falling apart. When the album does push outwards – the rolling rhythm section on ‘Eastside Girls’, the almost anthemic lift of ‘New Personality’ – it does so as an extension of that core, not an escape from it.

None of this would land if the writing wasn’t up to it, and here Jaffe is in quietly impressive form. The record explores themes of burnout, romance, ambition, and disappointment with a clarity that suggests a great deal of thought behind the scenes. There’s a risk with this kind of mid-tempo, mid-thirties introspection that everything blurs into tasteful mush; ‘Chasing the Chimera’ mostly dodges it by being specific. The images are concrete, the emotions sharply drawn, and even when the tempos sag a touch in the final third, you never get the sense he’s coasting.

It’s not a reinvention of Del Water Gap so much as a deepening. If earlier records were about the rush of feeling, this one is about the hangover – and the hesitant, hopeful sense that there might still be something worth chasing afterwards. It’s a slow burn, but by the time ‘Eagle in My Nest’ fades, the cumulative effect is substantial. ‘Chasing the Chimera’ doesn’t shout for attention, but it doesn’t need to. It’s the sound of a songwriter quietly hitting a new peak.