Devin Shaffer – I Guess I’m Crawling
Today, Devin Shaffer shares her new single and music video, “I Guess I’m Crawling,” a song that encapsulates the ethos of her forthcoming album Patience, out November 7 via American Dreams.
Featuring Mari Rubio (aka More Eaze) on pedal steel, Sarah Galdes on drums, and marking Shaffer’s first released song with her on violin, it traces the uneasy beauty that comes with letting go of control: “It is a surrender to the pace at which things move,” Devin shares, “a surrender to all the setbacks and limitations and diversions that have led me to where I am now.”
Following lead single “All My Dreams Are Coming True,” “I Guess I’m Crawling” arrives alongside a video Shaffer edited from Super 8 footage shot by Jordan Reyes during her studio days at Bim Bom Studio in Chicago with Michael Macdonald (The Slaps, Tenci, Mia Joy, Tasha), and later mixing at La Frette Studio in La Frette-sur-Seine, France with engineer Anthony Cazade (Fontaines D.C., Ballaké Sissoko). The video turns the song into a love letter to the process of making an album—a fitting reflection of Patience’s central themes of taking your time and embracing uncertainty, setbacks, and detours as essential parts of finding one’s way.
Written between 2021 and 2023 and Shaffer’s move from Chicago to New York City, Patience mirrors life’s highs and lows on the search for deeper meaning, purpose, and connection. For the first time, Shaffer leads a group of sensitive instrumentalists—Lucy Liyou on piano, Sarah Galdes (L’Rain, Bartees Strange) on drums, Marilu Donovan (LEYA) on harp, and Mari Rubio (More Eaze, Pink Must) on pedal steel—through a stirring collection of folk songs. On Patience, Shaffer challenges both herself and the listener to find peace in the unknowing and comfort in the surrender.
Patience takes on the hushed intimacy of songwriters like Vashti Bunyan, Sibylle Baier, and Linda Perhacs and updates it for the twenty-first century. After releasing her debut LP, In My Dreams I’m There, in 2021, Shaffer found a discarded Martin on the side of the road with a note that read, “This is for you.” “In the past, my songs were very much woven into this greater ambient soundscape,” explains Shaffer. “Songs would emerge from ambient drift and archival audio. When I had more traditional songs, I never really let them sit on their own.” But she took the new guitar as an invitation to strip down her songwriting practice.
Patience oscillates between high and low, between certainty and uncertainty. All of these supposed failures, Shaffer suggests, lead you to where you’re supposed to be. Though her newest songs navigate optimism and pessimism, hope and defeat, frustration and acceptance, on Patience, Shaffer has never sounded so sure.
Listen to “I Guess I’m Crawling” above and stay tuned for more music from Devin Shaffer arriving ahead of the full release of Patience on November 7 via American Dreams.
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