Imagine you are like me, and your room is a goddamn mess. Clothing piles up in mountains creating valleys where discarded books and crumpled notes rest like stepping stones. Files and keepsakes sit disorganized in drawers and bins like secret caverns hiding little treasures. Photos, posters, and important documents line the walls like code words left behind from previous explorers. But despite what most would call a pigsty, you know where to find everything.
All of this preludes my exploration of Cape Crush’s Place Memory, the debut LP from the power-emo band from the beautiful city of Beverly, Massachusetts. The term “place memory” refers to the ability to use locations to recall memories, emotions, and experiences. This can also refer to a mind map or mnemonic device, but the concept remains similar: Even with things scattered about, one can use place memory to return to a certain frame of mind. Or sometimes, place memory uses them.
Yes, place memory can sneak up on you, especially when you go somewhere that offers even the slightest bit of familiarity. Go to a diner or enter a room that looks like one you’ve entered before, and you get lost in grief, overwhelming responsibilities, memories of breakups with lovers and friends, fretting over financial and mental health, and fear about the overall state of the world. These themes pop up on Place Memory in ten tracks that showcase Cape Crush’s range, stemming from their usual electric emo fare to stripped-down arrangements and even some Americana experimentation. But the band’s emotion and energy remain standard throughout the record, even in the more subdued songs.
The band consists of Ali Lipman (vox/guitars), James Christopher (vox/guitars), Jake Letizia (bass/vox), and Mike O’Toole (drums). The excellent O’Toole fills the big shoes of long-time former drummer Cody Rico, who left the group in late 2024 due to health reasons. Rico lives on in the record: The title track ends with three-hundred plus voices chanting “Co-dy! Co-dy!” at his last show with the band. There’s yet another example of place memory, perhaps in reverse: The sound of the crowd gives you the feeling of being in the Bit Bar in Salem, Mass., knowing you’re at a turning point in this band’s history while hearing the pinball machines go off in the main room. (Shouts out, by the way, to Bit Bar.)
Like most strong memories, place memory can put you through the five stages of grief in an instant. Therefore, it makes sense, that Place Memory begins with the blistering “I Don’t Care About Anything” to represent denial, where Lipman sings of trying to push through memories without letting the emotion overwhelm her: “Been a while since I could call you a friend / Dug a hole so deep to bury the evidence, now you want to revisit.” The headbanging opener rings loud, representing the urge to turn up the volume and shut out everything.
But the album ends on an inverted note with “I Care Too Much About Everything”, keeping up the noise, but finding acceptance in it. When a memory comes on strong at a moment’s notice, you can’t get rid of it easily. It’s stuck in the deepest parts of your brain, and only time – lots of time – can make it fade. And sometimes, it’s better to let those thoughts guide the path forward: “I am tired of making a living while the living’s never making a difference / And who’s gonna fight for the misfits?”
The first two singles – “Calm & Delivered” and “Place Memory” – go back-to-back as the second and third songs on the album, and they represent the sound Cape Crush have spent the last few years honing since their San Souci EP. Both feature big guitars, Lipman’s harmonized vocals, and a sound that borders on early-2000’s emo without venturing too far into its often-associated power pop territory. Both tracks still play with the theme of “place memory”, but not as you might expect. On “Calm & Delivered”, Lipman sings about society’s expectation for women to “calm down” or “stay in their place” when the world gets overstimulating, when really the only option is to bust out of that place and righteously rage. And on the title track, the lyrics sing of Lipman visiting her sister and talking about the lives they didn’t end up living, leading to memories of places that exist only in different parts of the multiverse.
There’s a lot happening on Place Memory, and while the band’s energetic emo sound remains front and center — especially on tracks like “Bolt-On Economy Light Switch” and “Also-Ran” — they didn’t hold back from experimentation. “Come Shed Your Light on Me” has some Americana in it, digging into Menzingers/Gaslight Anthem territory, as Lipman sings of a tattoo shop in Kentucky and scenes of the Midwest while remembering her late mother. The Americana gives way to a heavy alt-country vibe on “North Street”, waxing nostalgic about an old friend while referencing a main road through Salem that leads to the river and the Commuter Rail stop. On the musical flip side, the sweeter “Dotted Line” introduces electronic percussion, Lipman’s voice layered as a choir, and softer finger-picked guitar to highlight the track’s romantic undertones (as it was originally a Valentine’s Day gift from Lipman to Christopher).
Perhaps the track most lush with memory-laden lyrics is “Train in Motion”, which Lipman wrote about an ex-partner who said – as Lipman recounts – that dating her “was like jumping on a train already in motion.” Fueled with bite, the song begins with the iconic bell of the MBTA train coming around the tracks, warning anyone nearby to get out of the way. Lipman uses that vibe to reflect on the difficulties of dating as a single parent, with her partner not able to understand all of her responsibilities to herself and her children. “Ultimately,” Lipman says, “the song embraces the idea that real love meets you exactly where you are, responsibilities and all.”
(Speaking of parenthood, Lipman lifts a bit of inspiration for “Train in Motion” from Charlie Hope’s “I’m Me”, a children’s song which her kids loved singing with her. She explains the inspiration here on Instagram.)
When Cape Crush get to the final track, “I Care Too Much About Everything” isn’t just the title: It’s an admission that trying to avoid memories hurts more than letting them take over. After all, without letting place memory take hold, Place Memory as an album wouldn’t exist. In this time where the world is such a mess — much more so than a filthy bedroom — it benefits the head and the heart to lean on the memories and places that made us who we are, even if they’re temporarily painful. After all, if the band were more like the album’s opener – “I Don’t Care About Anything” – why would they sing on the last track, “I’m tryin’, I’m tryin’ / I’m trying to get me through it / So hard, so hard / So hard to get me through it”?
Even in the cluttered rooms and pigsty palaces, having a mental map helps you find your favorite photo album with pictures that make you smile, old poems and doodles that make you remember good times, T-shirts and sweaters that still smell a little bit like the people who left them behind. It creates connections in your head and your heart that keep you running. It keeps you from giving up, and reminds you who you are, so that you can find the strength to push through. God forbid anyone tries to mess with your place memory, though. It would mess with you real bad.
Place Memory is a wonderful first full-length from Cape Crush, a well-sequenced album from start to finish that highlights its singles while providing enough meat around them to make it worth listening to straight through. It also answers the question the Boston Globe had back in February which asked if it was a good time to release music, what with all the turmoil and fear in the world. The band was featured in that article, and mentioned that releasing “Calm & Delivered” led to some of their biggest proceeds ever on Bandcamp, since contributions were going toward immigration bonds for people detained in Mass. and Rhode Island ICE facilities.
At the end of the day, it’s all about connections. Whether those connections are the ones between the mess in your room and your memories, those between the places you visit and the people they remind you of, or the links between you and your community, there’s nothing more important, especially nowadays. Cape Crush makes that clear in Place Memory, and hopefully the new album will find a big place in your playlist and in your memory.
Take a listen to the album below, where you can also follow their socials. Word on the street is the band will play a show at Deep Cuts in Medford in July before setting out on a tour with fellow Bostonian band Mallcops. Stay connected.
Written by Will Sisskind
