Indie-come-alt-pop singer-songwriter Jamws shares the beautiful, heartfelt and musically warming new album ‘Soft’.
Showcasing Jamws maturity as a songwriter, intricate and tight musical ideas, stadium filling guitar lines (often adorned with rich reverbs and modulation) and melodic, catchy vocal lines, the 10-track releases showcases some of the solo artists bet work to date. Etherial, gentle and honest, it’s a intimate yet wholly accessible and wonderfully rich body of work.
Speaking about the album he says: “Soft is about the pains of a growing heart, it’s a break-up album, it’s about grief and trying to heal, it’s about dying to be seen but afraid of intimacy. The album came at a time in my life where I felt very vulnerable – I was dating for the first time, I started therapy, the pandemic happened, life was different and I had to keep moving.
Preceded by the excellent lead single and title track ‘Soft’, the album’s focus is one of the main highlights from the release, Jamws is at his most fragile, delivering a gently swaying soundscape of reverb soaked vocal harmonies, soft drums deep bass and swelling, jangling overlapped guitar lines. The honest lyricism and melancholy drenched lead vocals retain an effortlessly captivating cathartic tone, like Jamws is pouring his feelings into the track as a course of painkillers for his emotions.
Simplistic, catchy and beautiful with subtle reverse guitars, and a gradual build towards the anthemic, climactic close which balances sing-along vocal lines with heartfelt impact. A fine example of everything that is great about Jamws work.
Speaking about the single, he says: “‘Soft’ is the favourite song I’ve ever written. It came to me when I was getting ready for my final week in the studio recording the album. I had this strange feeling that something important was missing from the record. Every song I’d written was about love or loss but I didn’t feel like I had a way of connecting them all together. I was thinking about why things hadn’t worked out when it came to relationships and kept coming back to this fear of intimacy and being seen. That’s where the song started. It came together super quickly. I was circling these chords on my guitar and kept layering these ambient parts like vocal harmonies, guitar loops, it just clicked from there. ‘Soft’ is me holding myself and saying – ‘I see you, you’re not broken and you deserve love’. The term ‘soft’ can have negative connotations and make you think of weakness but being vulnerable takes a lot of strength so I want to wear it with pride.”
A brilliant album more than worth your time, listen below:
