Shawn Alpay named his project Completions as an internal reminder to finish things.  

Alpay has served as a cellist with many projects, including Laura Stevenson, Father John Misty, Whitney, and How To Dress Well. He also worked extensively as an engineer at analog studio Tiny Telephone. But all this meant that his own creations remained deprioritized and half-done.

The name of Alpay’s debut LP, released Sept 23, 2022, is also a reminder: I Needed Help. The last couple of years presented him a great, if grim, opportunity to reckon with a lifetime of depending only on himself. Therapy, current events, marriage, and a serious back surgery laid the creative foundation for a batch of songs that circle around a singular theme: how can we let other people in, especially when we don't want to?

With that in mind, Alpay fleshed out the album arrangements by leaning on his friends, including Dave Depper (Death Cab for Cutie), Kelly Pratt (Father John Misty, Beirut), and Laura Stevenson.

Fortified Light

I slip out of work and climb Potrero Hill
And I calm down in the 4pm light
A cup of wine, a couple gin and tonics will
Lay me out at a fortified height

I slip down from home to find some other means
To turn the valves on my fortified place
I plumb down a ways and hate the maze I see
And choose to move towards fortified ways

We all know the chase of heart improvement when tamping clatter.

I'm trusting the head to tell that place instead,
You don't have to grow to prove to me you get to feel okay.

There is time and space for hard improvement in cagey matters.

So trust in the head to tell that place again,
You don't have to grow to prove to me you get to feel okay.
You get to feel okay.