Photo Credit: Raphael Gaultier
Taking place in her hometown of Seattle, the music video for “Creases” was filmed on the ferry line that runs to Bainbridge Island in Washington State. On the video, Lampe says, “I spent a lot of time on those ferries growing up in Seattle, going on field trips and weekend vacations from the city, so being on the ferry is really nostalgic for me. It’s also the first place I take people when they visit my hometown, which is how I ended up there with Justin Buschardt when he came to visit. Being a documentarian, he naturally films everything, and spontaneously shot the video on the spot without telling me what it was for. He sent it to me for my birthday a month later before I’d officially started Work Wife, and I’ve been looking forward to releasing it for this project ever since.”
“I actually recorded this song on the same island off the coast of Seattle that the ferry we recorded the music video on runs to, which was a complete coincidence,” she continues. “I’d been quarantining on Bainbridge the summer prior, having just flown in from New York, and was getting ready to move in with a pod of friends in Seattle who kept pretty strict covid precautions. It just so happened that a good friend’s house on Bainbridge was vacant when I flew in, so I lived on the island for a couple of weeks alone in that house to quarantine. Feeling really inspired by the nature on Bainbridge, and having lots of time for introspection, I wrote and recorded ‘Creases’ in one sitting, sitting on my friend’s childhood bed in that island house.”
“I went back and forth with Digo Best (Tessatura Studio) on production for this song for a long time. We got drums recorded and put a bunch of guitars and synths and stuff on it, and re-recorded all of the vocals, but couldn’t get it to have the right feeling, so eventually I decided to put out the original recording I’d made, as it’s the only one that captures the feelings from that time.”
“Creases,” is a vulnerable track about the tension between prioritizing your partner and yourself. Stripped down and radically honest, “Creases” is a tender bedroom pop track that sees songwriter Meredith Lampe coming to terms with the challenges and distance that come with dating an artist and accepting that their art will always be their priority.
A slight shift from her previous indie pop tracks, “Creases” is a more lo-fi love song, meant to encapsulate the intimacy revealed through its lyrics, unraveling the tension and distance inherent to loving an artist. In the song, Lampe takes the form of a bystander in her partner’s love affair, as she watches from afar and muses “but those creases near your eyes are not for me / If I was your muse, they would be,” realizing that her partner’s art will always be the main love, the main priority, and something that one can never be totally a part of.
Work Wife is the solo project of Meredith Lampe (also of Colatura), a musician living in Brooklyn, NY. A classically trained pianist and computer programmer by day, she picked up songwriting and music production when she moved to New York from her hometown, Seattle. Her music has a dark humor, blending melancholy stories of her own struggles with anxiety and failed relationships with exceptionally catchy melodies and instrumentation. Work Wife has been compared to Jay Som, Faye Webster, and the Postal Service.
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