California duo Ships Have Sailed have a new single called “Walking Into Walls.”
It belongs in the closing credits of a major motion picture.
Ships Have Sailed is the brainchild of vocalist and guitarist Will Carpenter, usually configured as a duo with drummer Art Andranikyan. Although most people consider the phrase “that ship has sailed” to be a negative, this group has turned it into a positive. Life is an unpredictable voyage, and sometimes our ship comes in, full of unexpected wonder.
Serendipity has indeed been a factor in SHS’s career thus far. For starters, the band found a simpatico producer in Dan Sadin (MØ, Joy Oladokun, talker). Their single “Silence” was featured on the Season 19 finale of Grey’s Anatomy – and their song “Get Loud” won the grand prize in the USA Songwriting Competition.
Most listeners will assume that SHS’s new single “Walking Into Walls” is about a relationship heartbreak, but it actually has a wider meaning.
“Our relationships can shape us if we let them, in good ways or bad,” says Carpenter. “We can learn from them, or outgrow them. And by ‘relationships’ I mean not only those we have with other humans, but with anything around us – our relationships with our world, our vices, our emotions. We each represent a complex web of connective, shifting responses and reactions to every single ‘thing’ we encounter, and especially those that we deliberately hold near to ourselves.”
Carpenter adds, “‘Walking Into Walls’ explores this very abstract idea by simplifying it toward a single, human relationship. Our relationships with humans can be as habit-forming as our relationships with mind-altering substances – and not always in a positive way. As much as we can grow to love things, rely on them, miss them when they’re no longer there, it’s equally important to be able to recognize when they aren’t serving you anymore and be comfortable letting them go – understanding that, for a time, we will feel lost when we do.”
That’s a lot to process in a pop song, but Carpenter pulls it off with his stellar songcraft. This ship has set sail, but the journey is far from over.
