Puma Blue looks beyond the veil with his debut album: 'In Praise of Shadows'
words and interview by Molly Alexander || photos by Netti Hurley
This interview was partially edited for clarity.
Jacob Allen — better known as Puma Blue — finds light amongst life’s darkest moments. This London-based singer-songwriter defies labels with poignant lyrics and ethereal soundscapes that envelop the listener in an auditory dreamscape. In marrying delicate guitar riffs with airy beats, he creates a sound honest to his current self.
Allen transforms the familiar sounds of his youth into something distinctly his own. With a name inspired by the “superhero-esque double-barrelled aliases of delta blues musicians,” Allen pays homage to classic jazz and R&B. Beyond these genres, he’s inspired by the limitless sounds of Jeff Buckley, Radiohead, and Bjork.
Since his first single, “Want Me,” in 2017, Allen has been followed by immense success. With over 50 million streams worldwide, sold out tours across the globe, and features in The FADER and Dazed, Allen shows no signs of slowing. He is maturing beyond DIY bedroom origins, finding new ways of seeing love and loneliness.
February 5 marks the release of his debut album, In Praise of Shadows. After years lying awake from insomnia, Allen opens the curtains to unveil his most honest and vulnerable self. It is a glowing beacon amongst the nighttime haze of his earlier EPs, with newfound clarity. The album’s mature introspection is rooted in “the painful things you have to heal from or accept, that bring you through to a better place.”
Allen explains, “I was coming across like a character. I wasn't exactly method acting but I was wearing a bit of a mask, making quite cartoonish visuals like Lynch. But it wasn’t really realistic — I just showed one side of myself, which was very downtrodden.” Rather than highlighting the mood, Allen grounds his sound in vulnerability and multifaceted honesty.
The 14 tracks flow between somber and sultry, coloring the auditory experience with an immense amount of love and meaning. Its spellbinding rhythms and delicate vocals sees Allen contemplate forgone love, falls from grace, and loneliness with mature eyes. From the delicate prose of “Sheets” and the infectious rhythms of “Already Falling,” to the hip-hop infused woe of “Velvet Leaves,” Allen creates beauty from pain.
Pure Nowhere had the opportunity to chat with Jacob over a Zoom call, where we discussed the importance of vulnerability and the moments behind his debut album. His responses were imbued with the same poeticism and authenticity found in his music.
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Your album title takes inspiration from the book “In Praise of Shadows” by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki. What is your connection to the book? How did you first encounter it?
PB: I wish I could remember how I first encountered that book. It could have been a gift from somebody, or I might have just seen it in an art bookshop. But it was like three or four years ago, and I wouldn't say it inspired me musically at first, but I couldn't put it down. I must have reread it like three times. I first read it because it's a really calming beautiful book on Japanese aesthetics and it goes in-depth on the importance of darkness and the difference between Eastern and Western culture. The more I read it, the more I thought about it. I started to see this connection that could be a metaphor for this body of work that ended up being the album and just a light coming from the dark, or actually needing the dark. I'm in a really happy place in my life at the moment, but the album was pretty sad-sounding, so I had to find a way to explain myself. I realized that these songs are important — even the really tragic stuff that you go through. It really builds you as a person; it can sometimes lead to really beautiful things, or it can teach you a lesson. So that ended up being [the album] In Praise of Shadows, to celebrate those moments of darkness in your life. It takes the title of the book really out of context. And I hope that the author wouldn't mind.
Looking at the album, is it the light or the shadow?
I don't know why, but since I started recording it I've been seeing it as a kind of early morning album, like that sunrise-type light. I think it's interesting because a lot of my music before felt very nocturnal. Maybe I'm just sleeping better now and I'm just doing better, so it doesn't feel like nighttime anymore.
What was your process like creating the album? Did you start with lyrics, the instrumentation, or more of a feeling?
It's hard to say because some of the songs were written as far back as 2014. Probably three or four songs are really old, and some of them I wrote in lockdown. But at least half of them probably came from poems. I haven't written poems in a while but I used to write them all the time on my phone when I was on the train as a way of just getting my thoughts out in a healthy way but keeping it private, and not having to think too much about structure.
But every now and again those would serve as a really helpful basis to write a song off of. If it felt like a particularly flowing type of poem, sometimes I could imagine music and start writing it around a poem. There's a song called “Sheets” that was based on a sample from a film soundtrack from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Two or three were written with friends just kind of getting a bit drunk and jamming together. But a lot of them will come from writing a beat first and not really seeing it as a song at all. I had a lot of time last year to just write beats in between touring, and by Christmas last year I had made a little folder of all the ones I could imagine as Puma Blue material rather than giving them to other singers. I was kind of surprised by how many I actually felt could be songs rather than production for other people.
“If I can convince people not to see me as a label, then hopefully I'll feel freer to evolve over time, and hopefully, people will be more readily able to accept whatever I'm doing rather than worrying about how to categorize it.”
Going back to the album, which songs were the most cathartic or healing to write?
Good question. One would be “Velvet Leaves,” because that's about my sister from a few years ago — she was in a bad place and nearly didn’t make it through. And I have been sitting with that for much longer than I thought. And I think I dealt with it at the time against my better judgment by just sweeping it under the carpet and toughening up and being a big brother. I think I kind of emotionally detached from myself and it permeated other areas of my life as well, which really sucked. I became a bit of a cold person for a couple of years and looking back it's so obvious now that I wasn't dealing with that very well. So I finally wrote the song last year and I quickly realized what it was about, and it made it a lot easier to finish. I think it was cathartic, especially because I didn't really know how to say all that stuff [out loud]. So being able to write about it in a song was really vulnerable in a nice way. I felt really protected by putting it in a song and finally being able to sing about this stuff in a way I wasn't able to before. It was very healing finishing that song.
I almost didn't put it on the album; it was almost one of those ones where I was like, “I'm so happy with this song I could just leave it as a little private song,” but I think in the end I wanted to share it, because I hoped it would encourage other people to not be afraid to express themselves, or maybe for people like my sister who have been through stuff like that. I've been through stuff like that too, not quite as close to the line, but yeah, I hope that even though it's a sad song, it would be encouraging in some way. I think it's important for people to embrace being more openly sensitive. During that time I felt like there's obviously so much stuff I wasn't dealing with and I wish I had come to terms a bit sooner. So I hope this song will kind of help others to come to terms with their shit sooner.
Something I admire about you is your defiance of standard genre labels. Your music exists in this flux between jazz and R&B. What do labels mean to you? Do you find comfort in that defiance?
Yeah, I do. I actually wish more people had your attitude because I feel like most of that boxing-in comes from journalism, and it's really trapping — especially when you feel like what you're trying to express is a lot more universal or in flux. There are definitely bands that I see as like, “Oh that's a shoegaze band or whatever” but, a lot of my favorite people that make music just make music — I don't see them as a category of sound. It's important because I hope (fingers crossed) that I'll always be making music. I don't want that to be constrained by people's perception of me because it makes it more complicated to communicate. If I can convince people not to see me as a label, then hopefully I'll feel freer to evolve over time, and hopefully, people will be more readily able to accept whatever I'm doing rather than worrying about how to categorize it.
Also, sometimes it's just a respect thing. Like sometimes when people, for example, call me a jazz musician. I actually know loads of jazz musicians who went and studied harder jazz at school, so I actually feel bad to be in the same category as them because they really are jazz guys, and I'm just throwing together a couple of funky things. So sometimes I'm more just worried about people getting the wrong idea.
Collaboration is a big part of this album, as you worked with many other instrumentalists. What does collaboration look like in this COVID era? How are you staying connected?
Thank God, I did most of that right before lockdown. The album I made in my friend Luke's house with him. We decided to record a demo there and then as we wrote it. Luckily, I had that ready. And I got together with my friend Javi who plays sax and keyboard in the band in February, and we worked really hard on the album because I tend to produce everything myself. But I got to a point in January where I couldn't hear the songs anymore. I was going insane — I knew they weren't finished, but I just couldn't finish them. Mostly just the production side of things, like the songs themselves, were done, and I had the demos, but he really helped me unlock the album, build on it, and come at it from a completely different angle, which is super refreshing. And then we obviously couldn't see each other from March onwards, which was really frustrating, but then I just adulted up, I guess, and finally bought the proper version of Dropbox. That completely saved me. And this is not a sponsored endorsement, but just being able to share stuff back and forth — I've been really lucky in that regard, but I do really miss being in the same room as people.
You can definitely work on things separately like homework, but there's something to be said about the chemistry of bouncing off of someone else's energy. And you can't really do that now. In a way, I got lucky because I didn't need that much. I'd got most of that stuff done by lockdown, luckily. But now that I'm starting to think about writing new stuff I’m kind of like, “Oh my god, when's the world gonna open up again?”
“I [want to be] more expansive, spiritual, and flowing. Like less reliant on loops and generic structures and more free-form.”
I'm seeing this huge rise in sleep sounds and music for sleep, and I was wondering if this was something that you would ever want to do? Creating something specifically engineered for sleep, or just sounds that spawn the unpredictable energy you were talking about?
Yes, 100% is the answer. And the answer is like threefold. I think number one, because I was an insomniac for a really long time, from the age of 10 until about two years ago, so from 10 ’til 23 I just couldn't sleep. So I'm a huge advocate for people sleeping well, because it's changed my life, but first of all I feel like a superhero now that I can sleep. I'm like, “Oh, this is just how people feel normally.” Secondly, my partner is always saying whenever I'm playing my guitar — “I wish you would just record these ideas that you're not doing anything with because they'd be so nice to meditate to or something.” So I just trust her ideas.
And then the third thing I was gonna say is that I saw — do you know the actor Killian Murphy? — he's an Irish guy in Peaky Blinders. I think he’s doing some sort of podcast or sleep audio thing. I saw that and thought, maybe that's something I should put some time into one day. So yeah, that would be a cool idea. But, I don't know. Do you know that Brian Eno album where he made music for airports? It's like an ambient album, and then apparently they played it at airports in the late ’80s and people actually complained about it — it was reported that people were finding the people in charge at the airport and saying, “Sorry, wait, what's this music? It's giving me anxiety — can we turn it off?” So, maybe I'd try and make a sleep record and people would be like, “This is horrible to sleep to.” and I’d be cursed forever. But that’s a bad attitude, I’m not gonna think like that. (laughs)
Do you have any ideas of where you want to go next with your sound or music?
I guess more expansive, spiritual, and flowing. Like less reliant on loops and generic structures and more free-form. Something I really admire about someone like Radiohead, Bjork, or D'Angelo, is that they tend to not be very predictable. And it's not about getting one over on people and coming across clever, but I would love to be more in touch with music on a spiritual level to the point where I'm just able to let the music dictate itself to me, rather than writing music in a sort of like Lego block structure where it's verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge. I try to do that a bit already but I'm just not very good at it.
But I guess the real answer is: I hope I'm just open-minded. I don't really have a set trajectory. I'm just gonna keep experimenting and hopefully just never get tied down to a set way that I make music, unless I crack some sort of formula. And then I'll just do that forever.