Puma Blue Holy Waters Vinyl

Death nestles like a sweet creature at the heart of Holy Waters, the highly anticipated follow-up from Puma Blue, the project of London based singer-songwriter Jacob Allen, to 2021’s In Praise of Shadows, releasing Friday, September 1 on Blue Flowers.

It’s less a morbid study in mortality, more a chronicle of the graciousness within each repeated cycle of life, death and rebirth, arriving eventually at a gentle affirmation to Allen, to the listener, at the album’s close, to keep going, “don’t let the dark take you whole.” It’s the hope-tinged bleakness that gets you.

While Holy Waters might be Allen’s darkest work to date – even when compared to the moreish sadness flooding his breakthrough EPs Swum Baby (2017) and Blood Loss (2018) – it seems to find Puma Blue in a better place than ever. It’s as if death being the centrifuge to the album has made the beautiful moments that remain all the more beautiful; after all the sorrow and pain has passed, Holy Waters basks in them.