-=- SHGZ -=-
* Shoegaze * Indie * Post-Rock * Grunge * Dream Pop * Psych-Rock * Ethereal *
ARTIST..: Puma Blue
ALBUM...: Holy Waters
GENRE...: Alternative
STYLE...: Alternative R&B, Dream Pop, Neo-Soul, Trip Hop, Blues
STYLE...: Ambient Pop, Hypnagogic Pop, Bedroom Pop, Downtempo
YEAR....: 2023
LABEL...: Blue Flowers
COUNTRY.: United Kingdom
PLACE...: London, Greater London
BORN....: 24 February 1995
ENCODER.: FLAC 1.3.1 -8 -V
BITRATE.: 676 kbps avg
QUALITY.: 44.1kHz / 2 channels
SOURCE..: CD
TRACKS..: 11
SIZE....: 234.64 MB
URL..: http://www.facebook.com/pumabluemusic
- TRACKLIST
1 Falling Down 3:35
2 Pretty 3:25
3 O, The Blood! 4:01
4 Hounds 5:15
5 Too Much, Too Much 6:03
6 Epitaph 2:05
7 Gates (Wait For Me) 6:03
8 Dream Of You 3:03
9 Holy Waters 5:18
10 Mirage 4:47
11 Light Is Gone 4:29
Total Playtime: 48:04
For the first few years of his career, Puma Blue - the artist name of Jacob
Allen - was perhaps most recognised for his synthetic bedroom experiments,
where tales of modern melancholy met smoky rhapsodies of devotion. On debut
album 'In Praise Of Shadows', released in 2021, Allen reached for atmospheric
dimensions whilst retaining the loungey minimalism of his early EPs. On new
album 'Holy Waters', Allen brings intensity and dynamism to mournful laments
by exploring his technical reach as a bandleader. Recorded over two visits to
Eastbourne's Echo Zoo Studios, 'Holy Waters' see Allen work through the
vestiges of grief, inertia and the prison of one's own mind, and the result
is a suite of songs headier, richer and more sharply delineated than what's
come before.
'Hounds' is the most striking example of Allen's fraternal synergy with his
live band; Luke Bower on guitar, Cameron Dawson on bass, Harvey Grant on sax
and keys, Cameron Dawson on bass and Ellis Dupuy on drums. A trip-hop,
space-rock combo, 'Hounds' offsets Allen's narrative framing of despondency
and isolation from the outside world through interdependent co-productions.
Lyrically, 'Holy Waters' is a sprawling affair excavating intergenerational
relationships. Allen can be elliptical and imagistic, like on 'Epitaph', a
hallowed entreaty to his late grandmother brought to life through
patched-together anecdotes and recollections of lived moments. 'Gates (Wait
For Me)' follows, conceived as a riposte to 'Epitaph' from the perspective of
his deceased grandfather - a marathon composition built around a funereal
Hammond organ. Lyrically direct and taut, Allen underpins the emotional pull
of the song through a dexterous hand-off between rolling drums and stunning
piano progressions.
The eleven tracks on 'Holy Waters' takes the listener on a turbulent but
redemptive voyage through a bereaved psyche. These songs feel like
visitations from ghosts; be it lost friends, kinfolk or the incorporeal
phantom figures that cloud Allen's vision of himself. Allen oscillates his
voice as he grapples with the possibility of life and the finality of death;
his vocal breathy, distant, disembodied or clear and close when moving
through emotional registers, like the feral flourish 'O, The Blood!', a
hypnotic, noirish tribute to 'Dummy'-era Portishead and Bristol rock
virtuosos.
'Holy Waters' is an act of self-reclamation from the enveloping mire of
grief, explored in non-linear, discursive notes. Death isn't treated as a
macabre entity but an inevitability, and Allen soundtracks this journey from
hollow despair to eventual rebirth. When the shadows loom larger, Allen
centres his emotional anchors, breathing life and levity into songs like
'Pretty' which recall the torch-bearing feel of 2017's 'Swum Baby'; a tender
folk-ballad painting a more effulgent patina of nights and mornings spent in
the presence of his partner's refuge. Backed by the might of a synchronised
band, Puma Blue confronts his heartbreak head on; the result is a dark,
sultry and minor-key triumph through melancholia to a place of salvation.
*
Death nestles like a sweet creature at the heart of Holy Waters, the highly
anticipated follow-up to 2021's In Praise of Shadows, set for release this
Autumn via Blue Flowers. It's less a morbid study in mortality, more a
chronicle of the graciousness within each repeated cycle of life, death and
rebirth, arriving eventually at a gentle affirmation to himself, to the
listener, at the album's close, to keep going, "don't let the dark take you
whole". It's the hope-tinged bleakness that gets you.
A substantial leap in Jacob's artistry; extraordinary multitudes of hurt and
relief are journeyed in his writing, navigating the spaces between grief and
elation, and the strange semblances between solitude and community. Across
its eleven tracks, his voice is a gossamer fabric delighting in the brightest
language as he retraces every path walked in the harshest years of his life
with a startling sincerity, looking each face of grief in the bloodshot eye.
For the most part, he accepts it.
Recorded with his live band over the course of two visits to Eastbourne's
Echo Zoo Studios, a joy permeates each sonic corner of Holy Waters, the
studio techniques more analogue and experimental than his previous work, but
sounding fuller, richer, killing what ego was left in Puma Blue and paying
their band-centric debts proudly. Inspired still by luminaries from Jeff
Buckley to Bj rk, more important to Holy Waters was Portishead's inexplicable
marriage of a live band and production, and the improvisational work of Can
and Hendrix. This is an album that can be devoured late at night with
headphones as much as it can be blasted on the open road.
While Holy Waters might be his darkest work to date - even when compared to
the moreish sadness flooding his breakthrough EPs Swum Baby (2017) and Blood
Loss (2018) - it seems to find Puma Blue in a better place than ever. It's as
if death being the centrifuge to the album has made the beautiful moments
that remain all the more beautiful; after all the sorrow and pain has passed,
Holy Waters basks in them.
*
The hardest thing to reconcile about experiencing grief is that it's
nonlinear. It lurks in corners, an ever-present shadow threatening to become
horribly tangible at any instant. The unpredictability is disorienting; it's
tough to know which stage you're in until you're able to unclench your
jaw-even for just a second. Listening to Jacob Allen grapple with grief is
achingly familiar: He's stunned by its sharp edges and, at times, accepting
of its presence; but mostly, he's utterly dismantled by its relentlessness.
On Holy Waters, Allen's sophomore release under the name Puma Blue, the
Atlanta-by-way-of-South London songwriter builds intricate compositions to
try and contain these overwhelming feelings. It's a stark and powerful
record, one that arrives as gorgeous as it is heartrending.
Puma Blue's first two EPs-Only Trying to Tell You and Blood Loss-were
surprisingly accomplished bedroom recordings that felt cozy and inviting,
both full of charming lo-fi R&B. Allen widened the scope for his 2021 debut,
In Praise of Shadows, expanding his approach slightly while keeping the
haziness intact. Shadows, a beguiling mix of chill-beats drum programming,
Sade-inspired quiet storm and a smattering of light-jazz flourishes, was an
intimate exploration of insomnia and the derealization that it can produce.
Its beautiful sounds, especially Allen's delicate falsetto, conceal a
crushing despondency like a tasteful silken robe.
Holy Waters is an even greater expansion of the Puma Blue idea, amplifying
all the elements that made Shadows such a captivating first listen two years
ago. Allen still sings in whispery tones; the drums are either close-mic'd or
made from muffled, clunking samples. For minutes at a time, he keeps
instruments from sharing the same space; he'll often start with just his
voice and percussion or bass, letting an element drop off before adding
another. He leaves in tiny, seams-showing moments-like sniffling between
vocal takes or the sound of rain outside of the studio, creating a world that
feels two inches away. But, despite the near-voyeuristic intimacy Allen
cultivates, Holy Waters is much more ambitious than anything he's done
previously. The arrangements are bigger, bolder and more dynamic. Almost
every song follows a similar formula: start small and quiet but slowly
accumulate subtle layers of instrumentation and effects, eventually whipping
into a rapturous swirl.
The bad-trip psychedelia of "Hounds" follows a repeating bassline and motorik
drum pattern into oblivion: A skronking saxophone consumes Allen's vocals as
he wails "And I find myself alone again," eventually giving way to a searing
feedback squall. "Gates (Wait For Me)" spends its first three minutes turning
the downbeats of its groove into massive columns of guitar chords and vocal
harmonies, its second half dissolving into loose, atmospheric jazz. Though
Allen constructs these pieces into towering walls of sound, he never puts a
distance between himself and the listener. In fact, the opposite happens; the
larger a song becomes, the further we're drawn into his world.
There's a majesty to these compositions, a mesmeric attention to detail. On
"Pretty," the album's closest approximation of a "happy" number, a slightly
serrated synth briefly doubles Allen's falsetto, giving his plaintive croon
an uncanny valley tinge. It's hard to not get chills when, in the second
chorus of "Too Much, Too Much," Allen sings "Maybe it's just all too much /
to see it all turn to dust" an octave higher than before. As he repeats that
mantra, he and his band enter an In Rainbows-style outro: all guitars
shining, all percussion shuffling.
The album's midpoint, "Epitaph," feels like a welcomed release valve after
the sustained tension of the first five tracks. It's the most stripped-down
composition on the record, a simple time-keeping bass guitar grounding
Allen's chorused vocals and smoke-plume pads. Here, Holy Waters takes a much
dreamier path, unfolding like a continuous sigh and losing a little bit of
steam in the process. Though Allen and company don't reach the same
consistently breathtaking highs in the album's back half, they still create
some dazzling moments-like the rippling synthesizer sequences low in the mix
of "Light Is Gone," or the cumulus cloud harmonies that billow throughout
"Dream of You." It's a darkly hypnotic collection, swooning and seductive,
nearly impossible to tear yourself away from. There's a smoldering power
bolstering these delicate songs; Holy Waters is as vulnerable as eye contact,
as exquisitely cathartic as a scream into the void.
-=- SHGZ -=-
-=-=-==-=-=-
Shoegaze
is a genre of alternative rock that
originated in the late 80s. The genre is very
difficult to define, and it is even more difficult to evaluate music
within it. Generally, the genre is characterized by its
shimmering vocals, reverberating guitars, and
textural distortion that create
a tranquil, opaque
feeling.
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