The rise of Tobias Jesso Jr. feels vintage, the stuff of American dreams. Born in Canada, Jesso tried to make it in L.A. in the early 2010s, writing songs for others and playing bass; just when he gave up, a series of buzzy singles, released under his own name, caught the attention of a previously impenetrable industry. He made his 2015 full-length debut, Goon, in a bleary, nostalgic Laurel Canyon mode, brooding over personal hardships and slotting himself into a long lineage of L.A. singer-songwriters. Jesso’s chronicles of dashed dreams served as his own last-ditch audition; he immediately became a coveted collaborator, writing for everyone from Harry Styles to FKA twigs and nabbing the inaugural Grammy for Songwriter of the Year in 2023. The fact that he hasn’t made a follow-up in the past decade gives retrospective weight to his fairy tale. By sliding from the spotlight, Jesso appeared to claim something unimaginable in the 21st century: a happily-ever-after ending.
That was an illusion, needless to say, because real life is always more complicated. Yet his second outing, Shine, doesn’t break the spell—somehow, it makes it more captivating. Once again, Jesso writes from his actual emotions while also reflexively playing the part of bedroom balladeer. Shine sounds like a faded memory of his first record, which had full arrangements but lives in my head as a solo guy-at-the-piano song cycle. Here, the instrumentation is truly spare, besides a batshit percussion build on “I Love You” so surprising that mentioning it feels like spoiling a jump scare in a horror film. These are human-scaled tunes that unfold like rough demos, with a nakedness that drags Jesso’s conceptual bent to the fore. Shine presents like a series of mockups, exploded to the proportions of finished products. In their raw intensity, they’re better than final drafts.
One can imagine how the many artists Jesso writes for might elaborate on a number like opener “Waiting Around,” which haltingly unspools the details of a troubled romance over twinkling piano. There’s space here for a peppier, busier arrangement, but in Jesso’s version, we become aware of the gulf between pop’s surface and its craft—these hushed, restrained four minutes are a masterclass in calculated delivery and controlled intonation. Jesso’s croon sounds contemporary, leaving the ’70s affectations behind, as does the cursive way he delivers the couplet “You and I met/At a friend’s party,” or his heavy stress on “c” in the line “So ridiculous.”
Jesso’s lyrics, which have gotten knottier and more clever since the wistful generalities of his first release, can dip into the allegorical quips of Sabrina Carpenter. “Lovin’ you’s worse than/Customer service,” he sings on “Black Magic.” “Can you imagine that?” Yet many of his words are as unadorned in their anguish as the backing is sparse. He delves into the end of a relationship with the obsessiveness of someone who isn’t over it: “Remember when we drove/Along the coastal line/The ocean wide and clear,” goes one verse on the gorgeous, serpentine “Rain,” only to fast forward to the present tense: He and his lover sit on a bench, staring tearfully at a threatening cloud. Of course Jesso gets meta—“Is it a metaphor for you and I?”
If Goon feared failure, Shine cogitates over futility and stasis, the possibility of being caught in a cycle. “You run like there’s dogs abound,” he yelps on “Black Magic”; “I’m chasing my own tail.” Earlier this month, Jesso told the Los Angeles Times how he found himself suddenly unable to be creative as a hired gun, to do the labor of ignoring his own feelings while aiding the visions of others—and so he cleared his schedule and devoted himself to his own music for the first time in a decade. We feel the weight of this moment of reckoning, in his art as much as in his romantic life: “I just don’t know myself anymore,” he admits on “Bridges,” “’Cause I do things now that I never did before.”
For a maiden voyage, Goon was a glitzy affair, studded with famous producers. Shine takes a different tack. Sure, Justin Vernon and Danielle Haim show up on a couple of cuts, but as songwriters, not performers. They seem to switch places with Jesso, a self-conscious gesture that speaks to the disc’s intentions: A drama without any set decoration, the 29-minute album blurs cast and crew, letting the curtain flutter open to reveal the backstage. It wouldn’t work if the songs themselves weren’t so powerful—quaking, earnest, and awash in apparently unfussy ambience. This may be Jesso’s unplugged album, but close listens reveal that his refurbished Steinway isn’t so unadorned. There’s the shudder of an open hi-hat in the background of “Waiting Around” and “Green Eyes” that gives each track a faint backbone, while “Black Magic” has flashes of a muted electronic phrase that follows the main melody—same with “Rain.”
Ultimately, Jesso scrawls all over his own artwork, summoning the bruising final phase of alt-rockers Low more than any gentle predecessors. A high-decibel drum part, performed by his friend Kane Ritchotte, pummels the sentimental chords and vocal fry of centerpiece “I Love You.” Its entrance is tentative, yet so loud and blown out it feels overwhelming, particularly arriving this deep into such a subdued album, and soon the drums consume the track. Such a peak feels at once like a romantic scar and a recognition of the studio’s power, demonstrating how a simple rhythm can swallow these woebegone, angsty songs whole. We’re aware of the vulnerability of the songwriter and the brute force of the accompaniment—both aspects are emphasized in their stark juxtaposition.
Closer “Lullabye” reduces the boil of “I Love You” to a light simmer of cymbals. “Don’t you know you have to break apart/To really Shine?” Jesso coos. He may be moving on, but the point is what brought him there: his life and his songwriting practice smashing into shards. That he lets us see the pieces, instead of filling in the cracks, makes this portrait feel bracing and true.
