Del Water Gap Performed in NOLA
Indie pop
singer Del Water Gap, also known as S. Holden Jaffe, had the entire Toulouse
Theater swooning this Friday the 13th.
The show opened
with "NFU," a single from his new album I Miss You Already + I
Haven't Left Yet, released on September 29, 2023. The album ranges from
themes of addiction, to loneliness, to glitter and honey. He gave his crowd a mix of old and
new with his "Coping on Unemployment" ballad and the steamy "Beach House", then
pulled "Chastain" and "Don't Say Nothing" out of the archives for some slow
dancing.
During the pandemic, Jaffe struggled
with burnout and questioning his career as an artist, but the "inability to
find meaning in anything else" pushed him forward, he said.
"It's all
I've really focused on," he said. "I have a lot of trouble communicating in my day-to-day
life. This is a way that I can communicate." The singer was shy growing up but
always writing. He carried notebooks, writing "stories, wishes, fears, and
became the weird kid at recess with the journal" (me too, Holden). He found
that music was the best way for him to get what was in the journals out to
bigger audiences, and the rest was history.
He describes his style and the artists
he is inspired by as "background music for kissing" on his website, which is
exactly what every girl in the audience was thinking at the show. Del Water
Gap's performance was every bit as steamy as it was emotional, both on stage
between the band members and in the crowd. Especially when Jaffe joined the
crowd for his hit "Perfume", holding hands and dancing with his audience.
