Embracing melancholy, lo-fi crooner Puma Blue discovers Southern Gothic.
Moving from South London to Atlanta isn’t the usual immigrant biographer of young musicians now. Especially not when it’s white singer/songwriters singing in falsetto. But somehow that goes quite well with Puma Blue aka Jacob Allen with its jazz-infused lo-fi sound. Like fellow musicians Loyle Carner (whom he worked with on his fantastic album HUGO) and Arlo Parks (whom he supported on stage), Puma Blue is an unabashed explorer of the darker side of life.
On this, his second album, gloom is the leitmotif, albeit broken with a delicate sweetness that lends a fragile beauty to something heartbreaking about self-image and self-loathing like “Pretty”. Songs like “Hounds”, on the other hand, create a nervous tension with driving beats under Allen’s almost genderless voice, which, however, so much can already be said, is released several times, sometimes with borrowings from free jazz, and then again from electronic music.
In general, Puma Blue tends to want to implement several song ideas at once, especially on long tracks. What could go horribly wrong is held together by jazz. However, HOLY WATERS also delivers song miniatures, such as “Epitaph”, where the Brit then reminds one of Elliott Smith again. British songwriting and southern goth, who knew it could go so well together?