Black Swan Lane - the messenger
By Alex Dematteis
The return.
Courage, the need to establish a new presence, should be analysed with the utmost care when it comes from a network of metal cables with a silk core, like that of a messenger of time who knows no rest.
Two years after Dead Souls Collide, we find ourselves combining ecstasy and tension, joy with the duty to incorporate masses of research and reflection, without having to discard anything.
Contact, the need to clarify, the efforts to be made, any form of God to be considered, the messages of the mind to be established, the escapes, the anger, the sky in free fall, the ghosts, the crashes, the games of the heart, the panic, the hatred and the weapons. This and much more enters the real and artistic world of a man who walks through time sowing petals of resistance and proactive approaches, immersing everything in his reservoir where dark colours are not pessimism, but rather a congenial way to preserve authenticity and honesty and develop solutions, using lyrics and music not as an outlet but rather an exploration aimed at clarifying the image in the mirror of his conscience.
Jack Richard Sobel's compositions have different effects on the heart and mind, and the generous Atlanta artist's twelfth album confirms this, with new solutions, experimentation, and an innate gift for not getting lost in frills, in the pursuit of success and other unhealthy forms of expression. He embodies his journey in a collection of songs and lets his unique voice and tracks take us into his hemisphere to silently celebrate this new contact.
Once again, this is an album with themes that are not easy to accept for those who are distracted by music and life. Jack reiterates his concepts, but he has learned to give new wings to his fingers, astonishing us with stylistic solutions and phenomenal ballistic choices such as falsetto singing. He has always favoured a melancholic touch, but, as with his last three albums, he manages to raise his voice, to shout, to shake things up. Kindness wins out, accompanied by a clear and robust moral code, with the beloved 80s and 90s protecting, albeit only partially, his love of songwriting.
Always attentive to production, the songs, compared to his other works, seem more mature, reflective, almost like hypnosis that reaches others from the mind. There is nothing to celebrate in life except a healthy anger aimed at making the world a different place. So he creates symbolic characters and phrases that are not meant to win people over, but rather to illuminate the truth with wisdom.
The feeling one gets is that of a work that makes the human experience a wake-up call, using sounds, rhythm and melody as messages seeking attention that involves responsibility and not just well-being, distractions and entertainment.
The Messenger engages the soul, taking us into the deep sensitivity of a fragment dressed in music.
We find ourselves in the mood of a man who, through the alternative and rock duo, indulges in excursions into shoegaze as well as post-punk, taking care to reaffirm his own style, which has been recognisable since the beginning. There are expansions, insights and variations, especially in terms of song form, which finds a greater desire for exploration in this work.
As we are accustomed to hearing, it is the guitars that create compasses, reservoirs of emotion, illuminating the sound, turning noise into poetry and translating the thoughtful beats of the man from Atlanta, who once again improves his singing by interpreting each song in just the right way, creating the perfect combination of different expressive possibilities.
Beauty has always worn flames, screeches and melancholic nettles to seal songs, catharsis and emotional tensions, gathered with the intention of offering the listener respect for an artistic activity that is more difficult to practise and sustain nowadays. The dark side and the less heavy side finally find an armistice through a mass of melodies that seem to suggest the sun as their goal, while lava and tidal waves are ever-present at their core...
It is nothing more than a novel made up of notes, splendid hooks, tangles, leaps and dreams, never lacking the desire to confront reality.
Once again, Jack takes charge of all the instruments, clearly giving each of them a function that is both individual and collective, taking his bass playing skills to very high levels. The piano and keyboard are painters in great form, and the drums, his favourite artistic medium, seem to run through his entire career across twelve tracks. It is an eighteen-year seam that permeates time with constant value.
There are references to works such as A Moment of Happiness or The Last Time in Your Light, not as a lack of commitment or inspiration, but for a healthy use of certain structures that give the new compositions a solid framework. But never before, as in The Messenger, have we witnessed smoothing, new directions, branches, sudden changes of rhythm.
The voice is a package sent from his head to the world, a spark of dynamite that contemplates tenderness imbued with a healthy procession composed of the fluctuating vigour of melancholy, a faithful travelling companion, generating tears as a consequence, second after second. But it is a sensual, true, unfiltered friend: round, full, magical and infinite...
A work that decisively takes the path of American stratification, abandoning (perhaps unconsciously) the direct line with European alchemy. The result is a remarkable freshness, ideas that make everything fresh and intense, demonstrating that he has achieved independence with his indisputable ability to work on himself.
It is the images and the careful choice of words that constitute an enchanting torment, a pleasant stroll through the soul of a man who decides to confide, to reveal his concerns, to be an intimate star in the sea of daily violence. Certain passages are imposing, relevant, while others are, in fact, messengers of what tends to be hidden. His most authentic, attentive, profound album, meticulously crafted.
It is worth noting the significant reduction in loops, allowing the instruments greater freedom of movement, creating intense masses of aggregation, demonstrating a desire to work on dynamics, enabling the production to express different objectives. And so we find ourselves faced with a refined, delicate work, with important themes that are developed as if the musical notes were also arguments, allowing for a fruitful agglomeration.
It is rock, it is poetry, a self-certification of absolute autonomy, in which freedom is being able to work hard, in which everything makes a difference, in which the sum of the details improves the meaning and specifies it. In these tracks we have storms, rain, the human desert that highlights aridity, humble pleas for respect and dialogue, where war is expelled and where musical wisdom consists of the balance of the individual parts. Once again, Jack entrusts the primary aspect to the musical lexicon, as if his voice and words could rest.
He addresses his listeners informally, surprising them with his openness to human contact and using new ways to make his music the garden of his home. His style remains recognisable, offering us a safe haven, but in this twelfth album he puts us on a velodrome and leads us into the waves of the sky. This explains the inevitable presence of Shoegaze, which allows the trails to penetrate more quickly. The dreamy aspect continues to surround his perimeter, but human maturation beautifully influences his abilities. And here is the new magic that makes listening a privilege, because never before has the need for welcome been felt as much as in this sad-winged fairy tale. Songs like invitations to dinner, like laughter waiting for the tension of the nerves to become, like an isolation that will come as a consequence because The Messenger is nothing more than a carpet of pearls, walking on which we can understand the skin of our soul...
Knowing how to transform frustration and concern into a commitment that brings common sense closer shows how much intensity has been used, how much meticulousness has gone into creating songs like planets, like stars, like horizons that change our gaze, to elevate artistic value to its maximum power and to make musical tracks a specific human space.
One cannot help but congratulate the choice of album cover, a spectacular snapshot by Jarek Kubicki, capable of combining painting and digital graphics, allowing the multidisciplinary artist to connect with Jack, suggesting, evoking, revealing the extraordinary imaginative power that sums up the concept of the album and at the same time allows the listener to approach it with curiosity, giving way to fascination for a sublime encounter between two arts.
Knowing how to transform frustration and concern into a commitment that brings common sense closer shows how much intensity has been used, how much meticulousness has gone into creating songs like planets, like stars, like horizons that change our gaze, to elevate artistic value to its maximum power and to make musical tracks a specific human space.
One cannot help but congratulate the choice of album cover, a spectacular snapshot by Jarek Kubicki, capable of combining painting and digital graphics, allowing the multidisciplinary artist to connect with Jack, suggesting, evoking, revealing the extraordinary imaginative power that sums up the concept of the album and at the same time allows the listener to approach it with curiosity, giving way to fascination for a sublime encounter between two arts.
Song by Song
1 Promise
It all begins with guitars and bass in a continuous whirl, a rock punch with a hoarse voice, ready to scream. A God taken by the ears, a dialogue that leads to the absence of prayer, while the harsh and scorching sound immediately disorientates the listener, introducing them perfectly to the world of the man from Atlanta.
2 Crash
Love often becomes a demand, attention, preceding the crash. Shoegaze masterfully combines with noisy melancholy, imbued with a poetic resignation that allows the music to describe the mood, the inclination. In this way, we find ourselves in a sky suspended between echoes of the nineties and the freshness of eternal pain...
3 Drawning In Your Heart
Jack's powerful, magnetic, delicate and poignant falsetto immediately amazes, reinforced in the chorus by a second voice. The musical structure consists of a sound progression that sticks to the soul, with the fear of loneliness allowing us to resist and stay together. A powerful song, even if its delicacy could mislead the interpretation. The novelty of the singing style is not the only surprise, as the lyrics and musical range are the perfect evolution of a celestial body that encompasses everything...
4 Shockwave
With a beginning that takes us back to the splendid Under My Fallen Sky from 2017, everything lights up with iron and lightning in the first verse, which then returns later on. The whole becomes consciousness that welcomes the sky in free fall, with Alternative lacerations, Dreampop petals and immature rock to keep the adrenaline level high. And, while a body suffers and the world trembles, Jack dusts off his old love for a style that allows him to mix harmonic and rhythmic planes in perpetual contact, in a seductive alternation...
5 When I Sleep
One of the most engaging and disturbing moments on this album, featuring exquisite guitars, meticulous drumming that complements the bitter lyrics, and a full, warm, scratchy voice, like a modern music box that suspends everything in a sonic and emotional embrace...
6 The Devil's Hand
Victories, calls, death, days gone by: a frenetic, appropriate rhythm leads us into the epicentre of rock, between the effervescent rhythm (able to stop and resume its course), sinuous arpeggios and the feeling of full gravity, in free fall, with the dark side dominating and absorbing earthly souls.
7 Laces
And it is goodness, the call for constructive and positive change, that illuminates this track, allowing Black Swan Lane's musical journey to reveal itself fully in these sweet minutes. The semi-acoustic aspect serves as an introduction, entrusting the guitars and a synth with the task of dominating the scene. Then come the bass beats, followed by the drumming, which heightens the sensation of flying through the universe. But the amazement does not end there: first, a piercing electric guitar (followed by one of Jack's very rare solos) leads us to shed warm tears, introducing us to a new mode of expression for JRS, which allows him to intoxicate us once again. We find ourselves on the second side of this work aware that more surprises are coming...
8 Waves Whisper Stay
Nature, which leads to the pairing with humankind, finds its setting in this dreamy expression, in which Jack's syncopated rhythm and short singing allow us to reach the catchy but never overly pop chorus, as it is not in the nature of this fertile and powerful artist to wink at banality. A scent of nostalgia runs through the music, while the lyrics show the absence of pain, as if apathy were an effective weapon, while the waves, both musical and marine, create perfect whirlpools that give us the sensation of a mnemonic and sensory flight...
9 The Messenger
Powerful, bitter, energetic, reflective: the track that gives the album its title offers yet another different side to the songwriting, with its pauses, its scratchy sound, and the wonderful alternation of guitar movements. The voice shows its natural propensity for enchantment, while the clipped wings of the messenger angel reveal the centrality of the concept album. Simply perfect in its cathartic ability to make us feel and see the movements of the soul...
10 Look At Me The Same
The planet of needs and clarity of intent seduce and encompass the natural propensity to create dreamy, rhythmic music, between shoegaze guitars and refined rock, with semi-acoustic guitar arpeggios and piano looking at each other, drawing us into a tender dance...
11 Flower Girl
Time, the moon, panic, a black vortex skilfully suspended here, with drumming that takes us back to ancient memories of the band, complete the musical mapping, offering us black and yellow rays, manifesting the need for love, which leads a couple to the possibility of a lunar landing...
12 Empty Desks
To conclude, Jack presents us with the apotheosis, the bitter sense of a cruel existence that seeks war and generates victims, despair and pain. To do so, he suspends the atmosphere, creates slow whirlwinds, uses the instruments sparingly to make everything seem like a caress in the conscience of the powerful who badly decide the fate of many souls. Then comes a vortex of elegant shoegaze atoms on which his voice rests, fuelling a delicate procession of enchanting tears swaying in the sky. The ending, as always for the American author, must be evocative and leave a memory, as well as the desire to listen again. And once again, he has hit the mark...
Alex Dematteis
Musicshockworld
Salford
1-12-2025
Black Swan Lane - Jack Richard Sobel / Music, Lyrics and all Instruments
Executive Producer / Frédéric Detrézien
Assistant Producer/
Steve Clare
Marco Oldenbuettel
J. Kevin Jewel
Alex Dematteis
David J. Griffith
Out on December 12 2025
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