With s h i n e, Tobias Jesso Jr. takes the crown for the most low-stakes comeback of the year. Coming from an artist currently in the running for Songwriter of the Year, Non-Classical – after becoming the Grammy category’s inaugural winner in 2023 – for his contributions to songs by Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, and Dijon, among others, the album was practically designed to be memory-holed. It arrives late enough into the year that publications would only consider changing up their lists if it were a masterful – as opposed to purposefully muted – follow-up to his 2015 debut, Goon, which is still the only album marketed on his website. s h i n e is at its best when it relies on Jesso Jr.’s gift for vivid production, subtly expressive delivery, and disarming lyricism to override its demo-like qualities as opposed to simply leaning on them. Though it often sounds unsure of itself, Jesso Jr.’s years away from the spotlight have trained him to illuminate the best parts.
1. Waiting Around
There are love stories that are over before they’ve begun, and then there are love stories we doom as such after they’ve dissolved. s h i n e’s opener has a sense of humour about the sadness we retrospectively ascribe to relationships that have failed, which wouldn’t come through if its sparse arrangement didn’t leave enough space for Jesso Jr.’s vocals. The little “mm” he adds at the end of “You were upset every other morning” makes the insult a little less petty, as if he’s dancing around a narrative we’ve heard a million times before. As the piano melody imprints itself in your brain, some faint percussion echoes in the background like the muted heart that used to care a lot more about every rupture.
2. Black Magic
You can imagine Jesso Jr. exploding ‘Black Magic’ into a truly breathtaking song, the way he might have for another artist. Still, the version he churns out here doesn’t undercut the spellbinding effect of this love so much as highlight the ouroboros-like nature of it: there’s nothing triumphant about being “stuck inside a candlelit otherworld,” but the light can still be rapturous. If only it didn’t flatten itself so early with the line “Lovin’ you’s worse than/ Customer service/ Can you imagine that?”, which would sound better if it was, I don’t know, the Haim sisters singing it. Fucking relationships, am I right?
3. Bridges
Jesso Jr. admits to not knowing himself anymore, a feeling that imbues ‘Bridges’ with the kind of vague emotionality that tires over the course of four minutes. What’s more, the “I’m waiting” bridge hews a little too close to the opening track, adding to the impression that s h i n e is running thin on ideas.
4. Green Eyes
Like ‘Bridges’, ‘Green Eyes’ has a solid foundation melodically and lyrically but ends up feeling undercooked. He sings about “rewriting the story like it was meant to be” but coasts on platitudes, content with sparing the details. Again, there are echoes of the opener without really building on its concept.
5. Everything May Soon Be Gone
You can’t necessarily tell Justin Vernon co-wrote ‘Green Eyes’, but you might identify some of Danielle Haim’s melodic quirks on ‘Everything May Soon Be Gone’. (Haim and Jesso Jr. both contributed to Vernon’s latest Bon Iver LP, though, confusingly, not on the song ‘Everything Is Peaceful Love’. Ontological differences, I suppose.) It’s not that Jesso Jr. is suddenly getting into specifics, but there’s gravity to the song’s broadness, not to mention a kind of magically flowery quality to his piano playing. It’s too pure and tender to pass up.
6. Rain
‘Rain’ starts out pretty on-the-nose: “Looking at the clouds/ And they’re getting kind of dark/ Is that a metaphor just for you and I?” But it’s also an evocative, self-aware song about that exact creative propensity to sentimentalize natural phenomena, which it counteracts with the much more human and demoralizing image of two people sitting on the bench with nothing substantial to say – waiting for the rain to fall in the absence of a shared language. There’s a bit of studio trickery when he repeats the titular words, like clouds overtaking the night sky.
7. I Love You
I was stunned when I heard the sudden, distorted drums that explode ‘I Love You’, less by the drama of it than the way it frayed the edges of an otherwise entirely intuitive ballad. It’s wrong in the best way, yet it’s not entirely nonsensical – there’s a sense of continuity to the song, the feeling of a safe space cracking the door open to seemingly earthshattering vulnerability. Jesso Jr. is not telling a story this time so much as actually charting it.
8. Lullaby
At one point in the song, Jesso Jr. rationalizes the album’s sequencing: “Don’t you know you have to break apart/ To really shine?” The radiance of ‘Lullaby’ stems from its fragility, which overpowers everything else on the album. The singer dips into his quiver on ‘I Love You’, but here every element in the production seems to melt around it, liquifying. “All those dreams we never held,” he sings ultimately, saving the best lyrics for last: “We’ll swim like we can fly.”
