Cape Crush – Place Memory
In Cape Crush’s new single “Place Memory,” the title track to the Massachusetts power-emo band’s forthcoming album due out this spring, vocalist and guitarist Ali Lipman reflects back on a peaceful day spent with her sister.
Together, the two fix up their house, paint it a vibrant shade of blue, and discuss the poetry of Robert Frost before Lipman waves goodbye to her sibling, who then sails out to sea. They wave to each other; Lipman back on the shoreline, and the sister fading from view out on the horizon.
But that day, in fact, never happened. Instead, it’s part of a daydream journey that was the result of some life choices Lipman made along the way, and how the opposite of those choices can exist in a parallel universe with a sense of calm and comfort guiding the way.
Much of what informs the messaging across Place Memory simply comes down to various waves of advice that have come in and out of Lipman’s life. January’s lead single “Calm & Delivered” took her back to a time when a stranger on a front porch offered life lessons on the pressure women face to be emotionally regulated when everything around us is overstimulating, and now “Place Memory.”
Just after the song drops, Cape Crush perform live at O’Brien’s Pub in Allston on February 28 with See You at Rogers, MK Naomi, and Hedge. Then on March 7, they head to New Hampshire to play The Shaskeen with Cozy Throne, Donaher, and Fun City Fan Club.
“The term ‘Place Memory’ is the supernatural theory that a place can hold an energetic memory,” Lipman says, “like when you hear ghostly footsteps or a disembodied voice, that perhaps you’re not hearing something intelligent, you’re hearing a repeat of that memory played back to you as if on tape. Or maybe you’re hearing your sister on the other side of the veil?”
An urgent swell of emo, post-hardcore, and alt-rock, with lightning guitar riffs wouldn’t sound out of place on an early-aughts Coheed and Cambria album and saccharine sweet vocals that exude an inviting tone and nature, “Place Memory” continues to thematically shape the album – officially out May 1 on digital, CD, and vinyl – that features it.
It was first written after Lipman, a big fan of advice columns, read a Dear Sugar column from 2011 in The Rumpus, titled “The Ghost Ship that Didn’t Carry Us,” in which the advice seeker was looking for wisdom about his indecision about having children. Lipman was drawn to the fear and indecision around making life-altering choices that aren’t easy, and in the reply, Sugar referenced a poem called The Blue House, by Tomas Transtromer.
“It talks about the choice we don’t make becoming a sister ship bound for a different route,” Lipman reveals. “One that we can only wave at from the shoreline.”
The specific scene that decorates “Place Memory” may not be rooted in reality, but contains a release valve that is just as important as anything that may have taken place given decisions Lipman was faced with in the past.
In the song’s music video, Cape Crush perform live at Moon Base One in Salem, of which Lipman is treasurer and co-founder, and shows her acting bored and disinterested as she daydreams about performing live with her bandmates, all longtime mainstays of the New England DIY and hardcore scenes: Guitarist and confidant James Christopher; bassist Jake Letizia, and new drummer recruit Mike O’Toole, who has stepped in for co-founder and compatriot Cody Rico, the honorary Cape Crush member who hung up his drumsticks due to health reasons.
“The best thing about being in Cape Crush is getting to do something creative every week with our closest friends,” Lipman says. “The second best part of being in Cape Crush is the music community we’re part of. Nothing is more motivating and inspiring than being one band in a wave of so many great people and talented musicians.”
In fact, the conclusion of “Place Memory” features a lively crowd chant of “Co-dy! Co-dy! Co-dy” that was recorded at Salem’s Bit Bar during Rico’s final Cape Crush show in late 2024.
“Over 300 people came out, and many of them traveled quite far to get there,” Lipman says. “It was a massive showing of love for Cody, and his retirement from drumming. We wanted to create some kind of tribute to him on Place Memory, the album, because it’s also his final recorded drum performance. The ending of “Place Memory,” the song, felt like the perfect place to blend in the chant of his name that we recorded. It always makes me smile to hear it.”
After bouncing in and out of the Cape Crush live setlist over the past few years, “Place Memory” finally gets its recorded due. It was written by Lipman, Christopher, Letizia, and Rico, with recording and production by Zach Weeks at God City Studio in Salem, MA. Additional vocals are provided by Sam Johnson, with auxiliary percussion by Weeks.
“It was the last song written for the record,” Lipman adds. “And this is my favorite song on the album, lyrically. I really love the chromatic pre-chorus with the secondary dominants (nerd alert!), and the acoustic chorus before the gang sing-along at the end. I think from an arrangement standpoint, it might be my favorite of our songs.”
“Place Memory” continues to color Cape Crush’s debut album with an abundance of lived-in emotion, playful lyrical depth, and anthemic choruses that soar across sentiments of hope and endurance. Picking up right where “Calm & Delivered” left off, “Place Memory” explodes out of the speakers and positions Lipman and the band as one where their own life stories feel eminently relatable. And its infectiousness is contagious.
“‘Place Memory’ is probably the song that best encapsulates the overall sound of Place Memory, the album,” Lipman says. “It’s a driving power-pop song with a big sing-along chorus. It’s got big guitars, big vocal harmonies, and a big group-sing at the end. If someone asked what we sound like and I could only show them one song, it would be this one.”
And that should pique interest in what’s to come.
The album follows the band’s 2023 declaration-of-arrival EP San Souci, and a pair of 2025 offerings in last summer’s “Blank Wall” and a winter triple-split with Good June and Impossible Dog. Those releases helped the band get nominated for Punk/Hardcore Artist of the Year at the Boston Music Awards, and earned festival gigs from Pouzza Fest in Montreal to The Fest in Florida, playing 15 club and venue shows over the year in the various spaces n’ places in between.
“San Souci is home to some of my oldest songs, and the first songs that we ever played together as a band,” Lipman says. “We were still feeling out our sound, and what we do well together. Working with James, who really loves big rock sounds, really defined our early direction as a band. Personally, it was like therapy to release those songs. Many years of things I wanted to say, and when you say (or sing) things enough, the weight of the meaning lifts. The lyrics on San Souci are all deeply personal, and while there is much of Place Memory that is also quite personal, I used that early experience to become more of a student of song.”
Lipman adds: “I have been more interested in narrative storytelling and trying to bring that into the structure of a song. I have also been more interested in how to write for the band, rather than how to write an interesting song for me to sing on an acoustic guitar. I think that has a big impact on the evolution of our sound as a band.”
“Place Memory” continues to unfurl all that Cape Crush packed into this record, one hook and melody at a time. And while Lipman applies her own personal journey to the wisdom included in both the Dear Sugar column and Transtromer’s poem, the idea of a parallel universe playing out all the opposite ends of our own life choices allows the song to be accessible to anyone who’s had to make a tough decision.
“I went through a lot of title iterations on this song, and eventually landed on ‘Place Memory’ because I love the concept of it, and it reminded me a lot of what the advice columnist was describing as a small comfort on impossible choices,” Lipman concludes. “It felt like a memorable theme for the album. Whereas, many of the songs on Place Memory have lyrics that are quite personal to me, this track is a bit more metaphoric. I hope listeners find their own meaning in it.”
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