I was fortunate enough to catch a screening of Noah Baumbach’s new movie Marriage Story at Manhattan’s recently closed Paris Theatre. It was a pretty good flick but good Lord, spoiler warning here but it really shoulda been called Divorce Story. That movie was depressing as shit! Not a lot of hope to be found in there. Undoubtedly however a highlight for me was Adam Driver’s riveting performance as the husband and father in the titular marriage. Adam is having himself quite a run right now, and earlier this year he caught an unexpected wave of virality off the back of a single and EP from NYC based indie rock outfit Sipper, whose first EP and single shared Adam’s name and bore his visage in watercolor on the cover. The track caught a wide variety of ears, making Apple Music and Tidal best of playlists and briefly causing Adam Driver to trend on twitter. It was a slow and steady crawl of a song, with a pleasant guitar line throughout and a vocal performance that felt like it was shooting somewhere between ASMR and singing as the droning “Adaaaaaaaam Driiiiiiiiiiver” in the chorus sounds like an incantation after repeated listening.
It’s never easy to follow up a hit but Sipper has done a pretty good job of that with his latest single, Ghost. Between the opportunity to get Pat Swayze for the music video and the potential promotional tie ins with recently released Luigi’s Mansion 3 there is promise of prospective virality in the future with this one. Even without it Ghost is a great listen for many of the same reasons that Adam Driver caught so many ears. It has a slow driving beat and a pleasant guitar melody, though lead singer Joe Beerman’s vocals here are backed up by the soft tender whispers of Sara Donnellen who releases music herself as Donnie. It very much feels like the kind of song that woulda fit in perfectly in an Adam Driver movie like Marriage Story, as when Beerman opens the track up with a moan of “Annie I just had a sex dream, I think you loved me,” I can very clearly imagine ScarJo and Adam playing emotional chess with one another in the foreground. In that way the song feels familiar and new to me all at the same time, like the titular ghost was always present in my life but is only now choosing to make me aware of their presence. And while the song has a certain haunting quality to it Ghost still makes for an incredibly pleasant listen, with the right backing I can definitely see this track fitting right into the same playlists that Adam Driver found its way onto.
Give the track a listen on Spotify and Apple Music, and go give Sipper a follow on instagram and twitter, and keep your eyes peeled for the follow up EP in early 2020.
