Harry Kappen's Distant Shore is a work that is grounded in true reflection. The Dutch musician composed it after hearing and seeing endless reports of refugees making the long journey across land and sea in dire circumstances, and the song resonates with this and also points to his own much easier journey of making the long trip from the Netherlands to Mexico.
Harry is very straightforward about it. He writes from a humble position, acknowledging the privilege in his own displacement, and his respect for those who are uprooted by circumstances beyond their control.
The music is a bit more vintage, with mellotron textures that pay homage to one of his longtime musical heroes. That influence makes the song a bit ethereal, a bit out-of-this-world, a bit lofted and expansive, ideally matched for themes of distance and longing. It's personal and universal, it's an arrangement that is better suited to a quiet, attentive listen than to background noise.
Harry does everything himself in this recording, from handling the technical aspects to performing, singing and producing the entire work. The degree of control is reflected in the cohesiveness of the song. There is no randomness. They are placed exactly as they should be, not in competition with the emotional core, but rather in support of it, and the restraint throughout is deliberate, not cautious.
Harry is a multi instrumentalist with a background in music therapy, so he is very sensitive to how he constructs a song around feeling, not show. That training manifests itself here, in the patience of the arrangement and the use of space as purposeful as sound itself. Few songwriters have sung so faithfully into the void.
After the Crossing is his fifth album since the pandemic began and Distant Shore is one of his best moments. It's an honest song, one that's not about him, but about them; one that's about people whose lives Harry may never experience himself, but whose lives he's nonetheless willing to honor, and in doing so, to care for.
