Soporific or genius? For a decade, Puma Blue – aka Jacob Allen – was struggling to cope with chronic insomnia with barely a couple of hours sleep at night. But he managed to write and release music that has connected to a wider audience. Since the release of his debut single Want Me in 2017, and EPs Swum Baby and Blood Loss, Allen has been rewarded with stratospheric streaming numbers and sell-out shows. Allen’s sound has elements of King Krule and James Blake. Thousand-yard stares where the silences are just as important as the music. Delivering his message in an androgynous falsetto (Bronski Beat anyone?) with lashings of reverb, Allen seduces the listener. This album is a product of Covid. Listening to it puts me right back in the throat of the lockdown when we were imprisoned in our homes. Now we are finally emerging, we can hear what the sound of loneliness was like for many and for some, continues to be.
