Puma Blue will release new album ‘Holy Waters’ on September 1st.
The record follows his 2021 debut ‘In Praise Of Shadows’, and the project launches with an intimate show at South London venue the Fox & Firkin tonight (April 19th). Out on September 1st, ‘Holy Waters’ continues the hushed, twilight jazz-soul leanings of his debut, while steering the songwriter into challenging new territories.
New song ‘Pretty’ leads the way, his whispered incantation augmented by backing vocals which soar into the falsetto range. Puma Blue comments…
“‘Pretty’ is about feeling ugly. So ugly that sometimes you can’t believe the person who loves you sees you how they do. We were playing with beauty and ugliness when producing it, the live studio performance already felt so sweet and delicate, it needed something uglier and haunting so I howled these notes in the bridge and we fed my voice through a synth that made me sound like a swarm of bees.”
The video for ‘Pretty’ was shot over two days in New York, working in tandem with director and film-maker Angela Ricciardi. Discussing the shoot, Puma Blue comments…
“I wanted to capture how it feels to look in a mirror and feel dissonance with what you see. I obscured myself for much of the video, shot on film and directed by Angela Ricciardi, I wanted to hide and sing from the shadows. But I walk around New York City with these angel wings because the lyrics are ‘You make me feel so pretty’, this idea that I am perceived as beautiful by someone else despite how I see myself. At the end, I come home to this lifeless figure, a nothing. The idea that even though you can be loved by someone you can still be haunted by dysmorphia to some extent. This song is an attempt to challenge that, to honour that admiration from the one who sees me as beautiful.”
Tune in now.
Photo Credit: Liv Hamilton