Ship Says Om (US/Sweden) – Water Prayer (single/future EP track) (ft Emma Lucia)

A slightly unusual one tonight as the Nordic countries (especially Sweden) start their summer break, which lasts six weeks or more and means precious few releases for a while.

Ship Says Om is a project of Jenny Gillespie Mason. I’m short on information so I don’t know Jenny’s nationality only that she has wide-ranging musical tastes and has at least one other project apart from Ship Says Om, on which she collaborates with another musical resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, namely Emma Lucia, who is Swedish.

It seems Emma Lucia asked Jenny to help ‘shape’ some of her songs into a more atmospheric, exploratory form.

The result is a four song EP, ‘Djuphjärtad’, which is Swedish for deep-hearted, and which comes out on 17^th July. This is the first single from it, ‘Water Prayer’.

They use nature-based field recordings and samplings, along with synths and organic instrumentation and some of them are evident on this track, mainly tweeting birds (I don’t mean those putting up cryptic posts on X).

Many artists do this now, especially from the Nordic countries, not to mention the likes of Weyes Blood for example, another Californian and one who adorns some of her songs with natural recordings, and I’m sometimes unsure just how to interpret them.

I’m not being cynical when I say ‘Water Prayer’ could be the theme to an advert for Radox (other brands are available). The ambience washes all over you from the word go and if you can’t relax to this then you should be on the meds.

Do they still have those waves-lapping-the-beach choices to help you nod off on the in-flight entertainment system on long haul flights? I haven’t heard one for ages but the last time I did this could have been the song that went with it.

Then it has the Nordic melancholy inherent in Emma Lucia’s voice.

Melancholic ambience. A new find for this channel and one that even put me in a mood to accept an England defeat in the World Cup tonight. And that takes some doing.

And the EP comes out just in time for the final…

Criticism? Only that it could have been a tad longer. But some things are better in small packages.

(Continues after the Spotify link).

Find Jenny Gillespie Mason on:

Website: https://www.jennygillespiemason.com/