Shedding Back the Layers of The Belle Curves’ Upcoming Watershed
Brianna Coccia - April 2022
Edited by: Travis Ryan
Picture this: You’re driving down the highway and you see a sign that says, “Now entering the Great South Bay Watershed”. Then, you may very well wonder…what exactly is a watershed?
Well, if you ask Delaney Hafener of The Belle Curves, she’ll tell you that it’s the name of her upcoming album due out on June 24th, 2022. But if you ask Google, you’ll get two definitions:
wa·ter·shed
/ˈwôdərˌSHed,ˈwädərˌSHed/
noun
an area or ridge of land that separates waters flowing to different rivers, basins, or seas.
an event or period marking a turning point in a course of action or state of affairs.
"these works mark a watershed in the history of music"
“I just really liked the visual of that and collecting all my influences together into one messy bay of art.” For Delaney, this album came at a personal watershed moment: She had quit a job she didn’t like, the pandemic was getting better, and her album was finally in the works—the amalgamation was coming together.
Most of the songs’ structure and lyrics come from Delaney Hafener (vocals) herself, but she acknowledges that the songs as a whole end up being collaborative art pieces. While listening to Watershed, you will hear from the core group composed of Nicholas Balzano (drums), Pete Mancini (guitar), Bill Hafener (guitar), Anne O’Rourke (vocal harmonies, acoustic guitar), and Sarah Gross (vocal harmonies). On select songs, The Belle Curves branch past their normal rotation and feature Steve Kelly (piano; “1968”), Greg McMullen (lap steel; “Check Engine Light”), and Zosha Warpeha (fiddle).
It's hard to pin down the specific inspiration for Watershed’s sound, but there are a few different genres and podcasts that were noteworthy through its process. During the writing stages, Delaney recollects listening to a lot of alt-country and Americana music, as well as indie and grunge rock. She then branched into the podcast world with “A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs”, “Cocaine & Rhinestones”, and “No Dogs in Space”.
Many of the songs on the album have been out for a while, but still she says, “Truthfully, I’m not sure how I picked them. Ninety percent of the songs are about my life experiences and processes of reflecting on them…The only one that’s not like that is the murder ballad—I haven’t killed anyone.”
When it comes down to it, the tracks on the album bring up two overlying themes. The songs are “really about just trying to make sense of the world and different kinds of relationships outside of romantic relationships especially. Because I feel that there are so many relationships outside of a romantic relationship that don’t get the attention or the depth that romantic relationships get. And I have always found that odd, because our relationships to other people are what make life, life.”
On the complete flip side of things, the songs are also about “being an American in this moment in history and what that kind of means. Where we have personal responsibility and where things are out of our control as individuals. And also about wanting to be optimistic without [it] being like a toxic positivity kind of nonsense—a realistic optimism. You have to see reality for what it is to fix it and be able to imagine a tangible, better future.”
I don’t know about you, but any future where I can listen to The Belle Curves’ new album Watershed is a tangible and better future that I want to live in.