Denmark’s Jacob Bellens’ last single, ‘Bread and Butter’, was about being stuck in, waiting for your real life to start, a wake-up call to live now and not postpone things until tomorrow, which seems to be a fairly common theme just now, for one reason or another.
This one, ‘Summer Sadness’, is about the very personal challenges he faced growing up.
He’s something of an acquired taste, Jacob. He doesn’t go in for fancy visual images. The video to the previous song mainly consisted of people sat around, staring into space. In this one he’s marooned himself on a boat in the middle of a river on a foggy day.
It starts out as a more up-tempo number than ‘Bread and Butter’ but quickly slips back into his typical languid style. But that languidness hides some interesting musical arrangements, including subtle mariachi trumpet, and thoughtful lyrics.
Like his previous effort this is a slow-burner which requires a few hearings to get into. It doesn’t help that Jacob doesn’t really look the part of a pop star and he does look like he’s waiting for the good times to arrive in the back of a taxi. But then again Rag n Bone Man doesn’t exactly have Donny Osmond – like appeal either, does he?
‘My Heart Is Hungry and the Days Go by So Quickly’ will be released on 3rd April 2020, on hfn music.