Some songs feel as though they have been waiting years for the world to catch up with them. ‘Delphinus and Dippers’ is one of those songs.
Originally begun by Pisgah’s Brittney Jenkins in 2016 and later recorded during the sessions for Faultlines, the track carries the strange weight of something written from anxiety about the future and released into a world where many of those fears have only become harder to ignore.
Yet this isn’t a song consumed by despair. Instead, it reaches outward, as Americana-inspired guitar picking provides an earthy foundation while subtle electronic elements pull the music towards something wider and less tangible, creating a fascinating tension between the intimate and the cosmic. Throughout, Pisgah sounds rooted to the ground while simultaneously searching for a way beyond it.
At its heart is the discomfort of being deeply aware of the beauty of existence while also feeling overwhelmed by everything that seems wrong with the human world. She doesn’t attempt to resolve that contradiction, instead finding solace in scale: stars, distance and the realisation that individual lives occupy only a tiny fraction of something vastly older and larger. It could easily become bleak, but she makes that smallness feel strangely liberating.
Mixed and mastered by Dan Duszynski, ‘Delphinus and Dippers’ retains the intimate character of a home recording without feeling unfinished. If anything, that closeness works in its favour, allowing every uncertainty to remain visible.
As one of three B-sides emerging from the Faultlines period, it’s remarkable that a song with such a long history can feel so immediate.
Quietly expansive and beautifully reflective, ‘Delphinus and Dippers’ finds Pisgah staring into an intimidatingly vast universe and discovering, rather unexpectedly, that being small within it can be a source of comfort.