In a sense, Tabor Rupp’s latest single from his sophomore album as Beach Vacation, Coping Habits, is a succinct summary of the album itself. On “Up Late,” Rupp struggles to untether himself from his mistakes of the past, effectively overlooking the growth he’s achieved since then—“wanting to ‘be away’ and remove yourself from the situation,” as he puts it to us, while failing to see the distance that time affords us.
It’s a funny coincidence, then, that the song was originally written two years ago before being scrapped when it didn’t meet its creator’s standards. “I was in a totally different mindset,” Rupp says. “Everything I was writing I thought was terrible. I have dozens of demos from back then that are practically done, but just didn’t have the confidence to see them all the way through due to my hesitancy.” That sense of frustration tends to come through in Beach Vacation’s wistful tunes, which straddle the line between the hypnagogic pop of the early Captured Tracks discography and recent trends in bedroom-confined dream pop.
Yet on “Up Late”—and throughout the rest of Coping Habits, with the help of producer Erik Thormshein—Rupp is able to channel that angst into rainy-day pop songs fit for periods of heartbreak, loneliness, or even creative frustration. “Looking back recently when trying to fill in the gaps of the album, I realized how easily I was able to create a song from start to finish in one sitting,” he adds. “Today, that is very hard for me, so I think I took that ability for granted when I had it. I’m sure that it will come back to me soon, but it took forcing myself to go back years behind and re-discovering these demos in order to complete this album. Who knows, maybe the stuff I’m making now is actually good and in two years I’ll look back again and do the same thing.”
“Up Late” is out now, while the rest of Coping Habits officially drops tomorrow. As with Beach Vacation’s recent collab with Cathedral Bells, the track pairs perfectly with Wong Kar-wai’s imagery (in this case Happy Together), as proven by YouTuber i’m cyborg but that’s ok. Check out their sync below.
