On her second album for Sub Pop, NYC-via-Texas singer-songwriter Hannah Jadagu trades the ruminous warmth of her debut for hazier, washed-out palettes on Describe. While the home-blended, personable charm of her dreamy sound still shines through, the songs tend to wallow and wade more often than they connect with anything tactile.

2023’s Aperture introduced Jadagu as a fresh-faced NYC transplant with a sleek and clear-headed indie rock sound that felt uniquely approachable. Her earnest, wide-eyed songwriting stood out atop roomy production that came off as refreshingly buzzy and intimate amidst her bedroom pop peers – very few could pull off both the slackerish grit of “What You Did” and the sublime sophisti-pop of “Warning Sign” on the same tracklist. Describe takes a bit of a different approach, a scaled-back zoom outwards in an attempt to capture larger feelings of longing and emotional distance. At times, it gives her a little too much room to breathe.

The smeared instrumental shades of Describe largely revolve around mellow synths, downtrodden drums, and occasionally hazy guitars. It serves some tracks better than others – the sensually slick “Doing Now” is easily one of Jadagu’s best to date, and the smoldering lead melody of “Perfect” is complimented well by its gloomier palette. On the other hand, the skittering trap snares of “More” and “Tell Me That!!!!” feel strangely out-of-place against her breathy, confessional whisperings. It seems like the more spaced-out and ethereal production choices are intended to project her lovelorn musings to a larger scale, but more often they end up getting a little lost in the ambiance of it all.

The hooks also end up feeling more sparse compared to the nimble earworms of Aperture. The saccharine keys and shuffling rhythms of “Gimme Time” and “Normal Today” feel a bit underserved by lackluster melodies, and the stop-and-start nature of “Miracles” is more frustrating than charming. Although aurally semi-submerged, her penmanship delivers on the promises that her debut hinted towards – many of the songs on Describe document relationships strained by physical distance, namely those that suffered when Jadagu left New York for her first tour.

Her songs are acute and sometimes painstakingly personal, but that’s oftentimes only evident on this record when you squint a bit harder through the vibe-induced fog. Describe isn’t a sophomore slump by any means, but it reframes Jadagu’s studied songcraft through a lens that occasionally tends to obscure some of her most genial traits. Her newfound focus on atmospherics isn’t necessarily a misstep, but it feels heavy-handed in a way that begins to anonymize a writer who feels like she should be spending more time in the frame

Order DECIDE by Hammah Jadagu HERE