Taking his cigarette smoke-clouded bedroom debut, In Praise Of Shadows (2021), and now this collection of fragile songs about mortality together, it becomes clear: Puma Blue aka Jacob Allen is looking for the light in the black. The Londoner is a dark crooner, he still borrows jazz, hip-hop, radiohead laments and now also exhilarated trip-hop in order to get at least something good out of the suffering. Mercy is only for the sincere. “Made to make a home/ But I am lost in wilderness instead”, it says in the furious saxophone thunderstorm of “Hounds”. “Gates (Wait For Me)” is even stronger. The rest is more brittle and yet more confidently produced than the singer’s earlier material.
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