Puma Blue's second album, Holy Waters, is as vulnerable as eye contact and as exquisitely cathartic as a scream into the void.
The hardest thing to reconcile about experiencing grief is that it’s nonlinear. It lurks in corners, an ever-present shadow threatening to become horribly tangible at any instant. The unpredictability is disorienting; it’s tough to know which stage you’re in until you’re able to unclench your jaw—even for just a second.
The bad-trip psychedelia of “Hounds” follows a repeating bassline and motorik drum pattern into oblivion: A skronking saxophone consumes Allen’s vocals as he wails “And I find myself alone again,” eventually giving way to a searing feedback squall. “Gates ” spends its first three minutes turning the downbeats of its groove into massive columns of guitar chords and vocal harmonies, its second half dissolving into loose, atmospheric jazz.
There’s a majesty to these compositions, a mesmeric attention to detail. On “Pretty,” the album’s closest approximation of a “happy” number, a slightly serrated synth briefly doubles Allen’s falsetto, giving his plaintive croon an uncanny valley tinge. It’s hard to not get chills when, in the second chorus of “Too Much, Too Much,” Allen sings “Maybe it’s just all too much / to see it all turn to dust” an octave higher than before.
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