Puma Blue AKA: Jacob Allen, will release his new album Holy Waters on September 1 via Blue Flowers. Today, the multi-artist shares a brand new single, “Dream Of You.” The track follows recent singles “Hounds”, “Pretty” and “O, The Blood” and is accompanied by a video directed by Sarah E. The video was shot in one take on a very rainy day at Coalhouse Fort in Tilbury on the outskirts of London to black and white 16mm film using a technique called Snorricam where the camera is mounted to Jacob’s waist.

On the track Jacob says, “This is a love song about how hard it is to watch the one you love suffer. The chorus is about how love can feel so big sometimes it almost swallows you completely. The song is about serious feelings but it’s a joke in some ways. I thought to myself ‘what’s larger than life?’ and the answer ‘death’ came immediately. I don’t even believe that to be true, I think it’s probably the other way around – but this idea that you could love someone so much that every time you think of them feels like dying really tickled me. I was drawn to imagery of Greek Gods and ancestral spirits. Drums were my first instrument and passion before songwriting, and I always wanted to play drums on a Puma track so I played drums on this one.”

On the video he added “The video is about trying to outrun death but realizing that I must surrender to its mystery, and accept loss as a natural part of life.”

Death nestles like a sweet creature at the heart of Holy Waters, the highly anticipated follow-up to 2021’s debut In Praise of Shadows. It’s less a morbid study in mortality, more a chronicle of the graciousness within each repeated cycle of life, death and rebirth. A substantial leap in Jacob’s artistry, across its eleven tracks, he retraces every path walked in the harshest years of his life with a startling sincerity.

Recorded with his live band over the course of two visits to Eastbourne’s Echo Zoo Studios, a joy permeates each sonic corner of Holy Waters, the studio techniques more analogue and experimental than his previous work, but sounding fuller, richer, killing what ego was left in Puma Blue and paying their band-centric debts proudly. Inspired still by luminaries from Jeff Buckley to Björk, more important to Holy Waters was Portishead’s inexplicable marriage of a live band and production, and the improvisational work of Can and Hendrix. This is an album that can be devoured late at night with headphones as much as it can be blasted on the open road.

Puma Blue
Holy Waters
Tracklisting
Blue Flowers/PIAS

1. Falling Down
2. Pretty
3. O, The Blood!
4. Hounds
5. Too Much, Too Much
6. Epitaph
7. Gates (Wait For Me)
8. Dream Of You
9. Holy Waters
10. Mirage
11. Light Is Gone

Puma Blue 2023 North American Tour Dates

Nov 2 – San Diego CA, Music Box
Nov 3 – Los Angeles CA, Echoplex
Nov 4 – San Francisco CA, Bimbo’s
Nov 6 – Portland OR, Holocene
Nov 7 – Seattle WA, Madame Lous
Nov 10 – St Paul MN, Turf Club
Nov 11 – Chicago IL, Empty Bottle
Nov 12 – Detroit MI, The Magic Bag
Nov 14 – Toronto ON, Great Hall
Nov 15 – Montreal QC, Bar Le Ritz PDB
Nov 17 – Boston MA, Sinclair
Nov 18 – New York NY, (Le) Poisson Rouge
Nov 19 – Philadelphia PA, Underground Arts
Nov 22 – Atlanta GA, Terminal West

Pre-order Holy Waters by Puma Blue HERE