In 2017, Puma Blue released their debut EP, Swum Baby. The five-track project captivated listeners, including myself in high school. That summer was filled with bedroom pop and alternative playlists, with tracks like “(She’s) Just a Phase” and “Soft Porn” layered between the likes of Gus Daperton and Clairo.

It was due to this long history with the work of the band that I was incredibly honored to have the opportunity to sit down with Jacob Allen, the creative behind Puma Blue, for my show “Wrinkled Page Radio” on WXCI 91.7.

The interview came in the wake of a brand new album that is soon to hit the world on September 1, 2023, entitled Holy Waters. The album is coming two years after the release of the incredibly loved In Praise Of Shadows, an album that explored the theme of balance between light and darkness.

This new record, as described by the Puma Blue website, covers themes of mortality: “Death nestles like a sweet creature at the heart of Holy Waters… It’s less a morbid study in mortality, more a chronicle of the graciousness within each repeated cycle of life, death, and rebirth.” 

Allen and I dug in to discuss this exploration of life and death in the context of his creative genius, but first we took things back to the very beginning. Throughout the interview, I was struck by how deeply he explores the ideas in the music and articulates his vision in such a gorgeous way.

“I think I’ve always had such a drive to create, and it almost just didn’t seem like an option, you know. I’d love to be more of an enigma, but I think I always felt like once I found something to say, once I wrote the first song, I really believed in, it was just something I wanted to share.” Allen explained when asked what inspired him to begin creating music. 

He went on to explain the motivation behind putting the songs out into the world: “The music I listened to means so much to me; maybe the idea was that…perhaps if I shared my music, then it could mean something to somebody else.” 

I wondered when the artist first began to process his emotions through lyricism, especially when the music of Puma Blue is so incredibly vulnerable and open. “I remember writing a poem at school that was about 9/11. I think because [of] the images we saw and the story, it was so impactful, even over in London. It’s pretty horrifying to imagine as a child, so that’s the first time I remember alchemizing something I was feeling into something that resembled lyrics. But I didn’t start writing songs until I was maybe 13.”

Allen went on to explain that he was a drummer in a band at the age of 13 and loved the art of playing drums, stating, “It was all I wanted to do.” However, the young drummer found himself wanting to contribute more to the band harmonically and lyrically. He described how, through the evolution of the band, he “picked up guitar really out of necessity” in order to articulate his ideas. After this step, he began to write his own songs on the side.

“The first song I remember writing ever was about my friend Becky. It was a song about someone at school that I really loved. She was just a good friend, and we used to walk home sometimes together. It wasn’t a love song. It was just kind of a proclamation of friendship…That was maybe the first time I ever wrote a song and thought, ‘Oh, I could maybe keep trying to do this with lyrics,’ you know, and that slowly turned into what it is now.” The artist said when describing what his first song was about.

 “Whenever I’ve been stuck or challenged myself, or thought, ‘Why do I do this?’ or ‘What is it I want to do?’ I’m always drawn back to the love of music, you know? Just how music makes me feel. I think the natural thing is to lean into the inspiration that sonics from artists that I love,” Allen explained how music influences him.

 He revealed that the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Radiohead, as well as hip-hop, electronic, and even classical music shown to him by his dad, truly serve as inspiration. Maurice Ravel, a French composer, came up a number of times as a figure Allen looks up to musically. He noted that his musical taste has grown deeper and developed over time, but a lot of these inspirations stem from when the artist was a teenager. “I think it’s almost just trying to find the parts of those sounds that feel like me outside of music… It’s not all for me; there are ultimately parts of all the music I like that are me. It’s just trying to find the moments and sounds, and philosophies that kind of stick, and I think I’m just an amalgamation of those influences and the failure to sound exactly like them.”

The success of Puma Blue I would not call a failure by any means. Having amassed over 400,000 monthly listeners on Spotify and 31 million streams on “(She’s) Just a Phase,” from the very first EP that was released, Allen has built a dedicated following, and for very good reason, as his work features a distinct sound that perfectly mixes together a number of sounds.

When discussing the influences for the upcoming album, Allen revealed more particularly that English band Portishead was really important due to the fact that the artist was trying to “marry the live studio with my sort of lo-fi production at home.” Portishead was an important reference in terms of how to balance these two styles for the group. “It can feel like it’s a bit of a dark art sometimes, like finding this weird middle ground between having live recorded music where it’s just us jamming or performing like a single take of the song.” He explains, however, that he did not have the desire to do a live record as it didn’t carry the same “exciting production element to it.”

Beyond learning to expand the live style and the production together through artists like Portishead, Pink Floyd, DJ Shadow, Lifeturns, and Can, a band out of Germany, the artist explained that it was truly the Beatles documentary directed by Peter Jackson that helped to inspire his creative freedom with this record and the dynamic that was created with the group.

“I sort of built the Beatles up in my head as these mysterious wizards, but actually they were just figuring it out on the fly. They were just so young, and it was actually really refreshing to just see them getting to make these beautiful compositions through, allowing for accidents and mistakes to happen. So I think after seeing that, I went into the studio with the guys with enthusiasm to be naive and just to sort of play rather than having to be such a mastermind and have it all figured out.”

We went on to more deeply discuss the release of Holy Waters; the project has three singles currently released with one more to come before the public gets to hear the album in its entirety. When talking about the process of making this record, Allen said, “It was really beautiful. It’s the proudest I’ve ever been of my own work and I think that’s because I opened it up to the guys in the band who usually just play with me live and the odd overdub here and there.”

“After the pandemic, I just really missed playing with them, and I also felt that the most valuable part of the project to me was how it feels to play with them live and how the songs evolve when we improvise. So I think this time around [with the second album], it was really important to me to involve them from the start.” Allen delved into that collaborative piece deeper. “I brought them a bunch of demos and we looked at my songs that I brought with me and we worked on those, but we also wrote new ones together and developed some of my older songs together. It ended up just being such a family effort. So much play [was] involved. It was less serious…we were just having fun and enjoying the chemistry that we have,” he said.

When asked what it was like to work collaboratively for the first time after doing solo work for so long, Allen said, “It was scary, you know…I’m not going to, like, speak down on myself, but I’m not a very natural leader…I started out as a drummer and it’s not really in my nature to want to sort of dictate at all, so it’s nervous. It’s easier in rehearsals when we’re kind of practicing for live stuff. I’m so involved with the vision of Puma Blue and so sure of what I want sometimes that I was scared to involve the other guys and I didn’t want it to complicate our friendships.”

However, it’s clear that he was able to navigate this internal struggle between his vision and collaboration. “I think in the end it was just so much fun and actually letting go of the steering wheel a little bit brought a lot of comfort because these people are more than capable musicians and I think they’re just so on the same page. They’re so in line with what music means to me and they know me well enough now to know my taste and I think it actually gave me more freedom by letting go…Although it was nerve-wracking at first, it kind of just propelled it to new heights that I definitely couldn’t have done on my own.” 

The project’s exploration was able to serve as a place for a lot of personal growth in terms of comfort level as an artist and what they’re willing to explore as a group. “I want to do that more in the future because the results, they just sound fun to me, you know? Like the spirit of music is a lot purer, I think, on this album than anything I’ve done before.” Holy Waters is special to Puma Blue. 

I then wanted to discuss his brand new music video that was released on YouTube for the single “Dream Of You” and how the videos tie into his creative expression. Allen depicts himself being chased by death in the music video and as explained on his Instagram post about the video, he decided to change the ending during the production process. 

As a listener, “Dream Of You” sonically comes across at its core as a song of love, with gentle lyrics that feel like an admittance of care. The instrumental is soft and perfectly compliments the vulnerability of Allen’s vocals. Despite the video covering the idea of death, the artist revealed the song is also about love. When paired together, it paints a story of exploratory grief and love that has a timeline. 

“I feel sometimes that I don’t even want to bring the meaning of the song into the video, you know? Sometimes I have an idea for a video that is completely separate or saying something else, but often it’s just another opportunity to bring meaning to a song. Sometimes you realize that a song means something to you that you haven’t explained in the lyrics or haven’t put into the emotion of the music. And that’s fine. Maybe it’s okay that the mystery exists forever, and it’s only you that really feels that song in this particular way in your head,” he explained. 

He went on to further explain this dissonance between the music and the video that it comes to be paired with. “It feels like you’ve kind of stood on stage like a comedian and delivered this whole joke and got to the punch line and people don’t laugh. And you’re like, ‘Oh, maybe I missed something out in the middle of the joke that didn’t didn’t quite connect the beginning to the punch line.’ So, sometimes with a music video, it’s an opportunity to kind of explore the meaning of the song in a way that wasn’t maybe present in the music itself.” 

The artist delved into this idea of death and grief that laces itself across the album. “With this album, I feel like there’s a lot of songs about death. Whether it’s about loss or acceptance of loss or grief or even…I think there’s one song at least that is about my own death. I felt like with all the videos coming out with this album, I hadn’t really explored that yet. It just so happened that most of the singles we chose didn’t really correlate with the theme of the album as a whole. So I felt sure that for this song, since it kind of alludes to death in the chorus. It was just a good opportunity to explore that and bring further meaning to this song. This is more about love than about death.”

Ultimately, death is something that we will always face at some point in time that isn’t linear for anyone. It’s only natural that a lot of art including music attempts to grapple with these topics and explore what it means to have a limited amount of time and, as a result. a limited amount of love that you can give. 

Allen opened up about the fact that death has been all around him including in his friends’ lives. “It’s been ever present. So it just felt necessary to kind of honor that.” The artist described that the video ultimately depicts him being chased and getting sort of caught up in the original version and caught by death. However, a different take felt more natural in the end.

“Death was going to just catch me at the last minute and I was going to cut the black, but the take that ended up just kind of happening naturally was. Mia, who is my friend that was playing Death caught up to me before we were going to cut the black and actually just rested her hand on my shoulder for a longer time. So then instead of it being this kind of a climatic end to chase, it ended up being more comforting and more in line with how I feel about death, which is that it’s just a natural part of life,” Allen said.

We then discussed if the previous album, In Praise Of Shadows, connects to the current work since the previous covered light and dark, and this covers life and death. “I think that album and that motif, it taught me a lot. It almost felt like a precursor to this album. It was [about] light and dark in a much more general way. I feel like I’ve been able to go deeper this time speaking specifically about life and death. It makes me wonder whether that’s been present in all my music from the start, you know? This idea of contrast and soft and loud or space and intricacy or light and dark. Yeah, I just feel grateful that I was able to look at it a little bit closer. I think I felt ready to move on from that subject at the end of the last album, but then all these songs just came rushing out and I feel a lot more confident and closer to these songs than I did with the last ones, so there’s something to be said for that.”

I then found myself wanting to delve into the vulnerability that’s featured across the discography of Puma Blue and the way that it digs into such personal topics. “I think I’ve always been someone that sort of wears their heart on their sleeve, and I’m not afraid to be vulnerable. It’s something I get praised for a lot, like, ‘You’re so openly sensitive or you know, the vulnerability in your music is very brave,’ and I don’t know that I feel that it is because it comes naturally to me. You know? It doesn’t always take guts to be vulnerable for me.” Allen explained. 

He mentioned certain songs don’t feel like an overshare but rather a way to honor someone and be able to share those memories with the world, one main example being “Epitaph.” That track in particular was a way to honor his grandmother and share a piece of their relationship. When it comes to tracks off of the new album, he said it does feel “somehow more exposing like I’m putting out uglier parts of myself.” 

The feeling that these tracks are more exposing makes sense as the topics range from struggles with physical appearance to a public admittance of making someone else cry and how that can be difficult to sit with. What stuck out as particularly brave and fitting for the album though was the track “Mirage.” 

“‘Mirage’ is about my friend Hannah that passed away in a car accident and thinking I’m seeing her at a train station when it wasn’t her at all. Sometimes in these moments, especially live, it really feels like you’re bearing your heart in a way that maybe you should only do with your close friends. But, at the same time, I think there’s something in me that often feels like it’s okay and braver things have been said in music… I guess sometimes there’s this hope that. If even just one person connects to a song that you’re putting out, then it makes it worth it.”

Given that it seemed there was a lot of confidence built by the group in terms of what topics to cover and how concrete to be in those explorations on this record compared to previous works, we delved into how the writing process had developed during the making of Holy Waters.

“I think that I started out, like, with the Swum Baby EP. And before that…writing lyrics that were, I think, pretty vague. Really leaning into the poetic side of lyric writing and not being afraid to be petty abstract with it and I think my idea was I’m just going to paint the picture emotionally.”

Allen talked about how earlier on in the band he decided to let listeners sort of figure out their own meaning that they wished to pull from the song and to be less direct about what the tracks were actually covering. He said that the way that people were able to relate to the songs inspired him to be less vague. “Over time, the way I’ve developed to write is to try and say things a bit more directly and actually spell out the meanings of these songs a bit clearer for people, but without sacrificing poetic language…I don’t want to just end up writing lyrics that are so direct that they’re just bland, but at the same time I’m very inspired when I hear a line that it’s obvious what it means and it’s still a beautiful line. I want to get closer to that.” The artist  explained that through the writing on the new album he has developed a writing skill of bringing more clarity into the work.

We then talked about the artist’s relationship with the industry and how it has developed and changed over the past six or so years both in terms of creative freedom and self-exploration. “I still feel very cynical, and I’m very wary and pretty discerning. It takes me a lot to trust people easily that are doing something for money, and I know money is like a very necessary part of any industry. But I think I would probably be doing this even if it didn’t make me money, I mean, I know it would be because I did do it for a long time before it was my job.”

The genuine passion that Jacob Allen has for his work truly bleeds through in the way that he discusses his creative journey and  what he prioritizes when it comes to the work of Puma Blue. 

“Yeah. It’s tricky…When you’re a smaller artist like me, I feel like [you] have to play the game a little bit. I have to post on social media more than I want to and there are certain compromises that just kind of have to be made in order to reach an audience at all and sometimes that’s no big deal and you’re just like, ‘Whatever, this is still the best job in the world’, but there are other times where it really breaks your heart. Maybe it’s just a really difficult decision or something you really don’t want to do.” 

He went on to further explain how he deals with this difficult dilemma. “I try to just let go of the resentment around that because at the end of the day, I’m not working in an office. I still have artistic freedom to do what I want and that is like the ultimate victory. I just wake up every day and I’m an artist and that is all I ever wanted, so I try not to harbor any negative feelings towards the industry but there are definitely some… I’m lucky to be surrounded largely by a really special team of people…they all really care and they’re really good people. I wouldn’t be doing what I do without them…What I’ve gotten instead of signing with a big label is like a really beautiful tightly knit family of people that work on music with me.” 

The bond that has been formed between the band will get to grow even closer with Puma Blue’s new tour coming in September along with the latest project. When asked what he is most looking forward to about this tour, Allen said, “I think just playing the new songs and I always feel like after I put a project out and then we tour it. I always feel a little bit stupid for not having recorded that music after tour rather than recording it before tour. It always feels like once the songs are lived in and once we’ve had the opportunity to explore where they can go and we’ve really developed what we do they always sound so much stronger. I’m always kicking myself like, why didn’t we record these songs now? Why did we finish them before they’ve been sat in the oven stewing?”

“With this album, it’s different because we did play them like live, and we did kind of live in them and play them together and there was a lot of live happening chemistry in the room…I still feel excited to see where these songs will go. I just always encourage the boys…I’m just really excited…each night is so different, and I’m looking forward to feeling that energy again.” 

Allen expressed a deep appreciation for playing live shows. “I really love playing live. It’s one of the best aspects of being a musician. I know not everyone loves it and that’s totally okay, but I feel so in love with music. When I’m playing music, it’s really where it started for me, it was interacting with other musicians and just the thrill of the vibrations in the air, I don’t know. Yeah, it almost sounds cheesy, but I just really… I love it so much,” Allen said. 

What else stuck out to me when discussing tour was what it’s like to connect with the audience and what songs typically stand out as favorites. The artist reveals that he really doesn’t understand why the popular song “(She’s) Just a Phase” is a favorite, and yet they continue to make it the last song.

Interestingly enough, that track is one of the ones that I connected to the most when I began listening to his work. When asked by Allen why I connect to it, I realized that I wasn’t quite sure in the moment; however, I think now in retrospect I can offer the question the answer that it deserves.

“(She’s) Just a Phase” is a track that pulls you in with the beautiful instrumental in the beginning and ties that together with lyrics of longing and a wish to sort to brush it off. Yet these little details sort of pull you back in. The track is such a strong piece in every single element but especially the instrumentation and the way that it combines with Allen’s genius that it’s no wonder the song became so popular. It also speaks to a very universal feeling of attraction, even the ugly parts of it.

To finish off the interview, one of my last questions was about Allen’s goals musically moving forward with the project of Puma Blue. “I think I am ready to do something bold. I was really obsessed with subtlety throughout the first album and the EPs that came before it. I think this new album is the first time in a while where I felt like I’m trying to be myself in a more bold way and let it all out and show my true colors a bit more authentically. But I feel like maybe I want to take it further and do something that actually scares me a little bit or challenges what Puma Blue is.”

“Maybe I’ll eat my words and put out a super safe pop album or something…I don’t necessarily mean it has to be louder or more complicated. In fact it would be cool if it was more minimal and saying more with less, I think. I think that’s where I want to go musically speaking…I’ve stopped trying to set goals for myself in terms of how many people I could play to or how many streams or whatever because I feel like that’s actually not helpful… and isn’t really what I care about I’m trying to focus only now on where the music is going and and the rest of it can kind of just be left up to the universe.”

To hear more in depth about memories from different shows and what the connection is like for Allen in terms of the crowd, what his favorite tracks have been to create off of Holy Waters, and book recommendations including poet Frank O’Hara, you can check out the full interview audio on Youtube and Soundcloud.

For more information on Puma Blue’s tour and where to listen to or purchase the album, you can check out his Instagram as well as the band website. Be on the lookout for one more single before Holy Waters releases September 1st.