The rise of Tobias Jesso Jr. felt like something preserved under glass, a shimmering, vintage American Dream narrative. The Canadian songwriter hits L.A. in the early 2010s, struggles, nearly quits, then drops a series of buzzy singles that blast through the previously impenetrable industry firewall. His 2015 debut, Goon, was a bleary, Laurel Canyon monument to dashed dreams—a perfect, self-fulfilling prophecy that immediately launched him into the collaborator stratosphere (Harry Styles! FKA twigs!). He grabbed the inaugural Grammy for Songwriter of the Year in 2023. The fact that he subsequently vanished for a decade only gave his origin story retrospective weight; he claimed the unimaginable 21st-century prize: the happily-ever-after ending.
That, of course, was an illusion. Real life is never so clean. Yet his second outing, Shine, doesn’t shatter the spell—it somehow makes it more captivating. Once again, Jesso writes from the raw nerve of his actual emotions while reflexively performing the role of the damaged bedroom balladeer. Shine sounds like a faded memory of Goon, which, despite its full arrangements, lives in the head as a lonely guy-at-the-piano cycle. Here, the instrumentation is truly spare, save for a completely batshit percussion build on “I Love You” so surprising it feels like spoiling a jump scare in a horror film. These are human-scaled tunes unfolding like rough demos, a nakedness that throws Jesso’s conceptual bent into stark relief. Shine presents like a series of meticulously crafted mockups, exploded to the finished proportions. In their raw intensity, they’re better than any final draft. You can easily imagine the artists Jesso writes for elaborating on the simple skeleton of opener “Waiting Around,” which haltingly unspools a troubled romance over twinkling piano. There is space here for pop bombast, but Jesso’s hushed, restrained four minutes become a masterclass in calculated delivery, showcasing the craft beneath the surface. His croon is stripped of the ’70s affectations, sounding contemporary, especially in the casual, cursive way he drops a couplet like, “You and I met/At a friend’s party.”
Jesso’s lyrics have gotten knottier and more clever since Goon’s wistful generalities, occasionally dipping into the allegorical quips of a Sabrina Carpenter: “Lovin’ you’s worse than/Customer service,” he sings on “Black Magic.” “Can you imagine that?” Yet much of his anguish remains as unadorned as the backing. He obsesses over a breakup: “Remember when we drove/Along the coastal line/The ocean wide and clear,” a verse on the gorgeous, serpentine “Rain” recalls, only to fast-forward to the present tense—a tearful stare 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 soul-crushing cycle. “You run like there’s dogs abound,” he yelps on “Black Magic”; “I’m chasing my own tail.” This reckoning is palpable: he recently told the LA Times how he cleared his schedule, finding himself creatively frozen by the labor of ignoring his own feelings to aid others’ visions. “I just don’t know myself anymore,” he admits on “Bridges,” “’Cause I do things now that I never did before.”
Goon was a glitzy affair, studded with famous producers. Shine takes the opposite tack. Sure, Justin Vernon and Danielle Haim show up on a couple of cuts, but only as songwriters, not performers—a self-conscious gesture that speaks to the disc’s intention: a drama without set decoration. The 29-minute album blurs cast and crew, letting the curtain flutter open to reveal the backstage. This wouldn’t work if the songs themselves weren’t so quakingly, earnestly powerful, awash in apparently unfussy ambience. This may be Jesso’s unplugged album, but close listens reveal the refurbished Steinway isn’t so bare: the shudder of an open hi-hat gives a faint backbone to “Waiting Around” and “Green Eyes,” while “Black Magic” and “Rain” have flashes of muted electronic phrases tracing the main melodies.
Ultimately, Jesso scrawls all over his own artwork, summoning the bruising final phase of alt-rockers Low more than any gentle predecessor. The centerpiece, “I Love You,” is pummled by a high-decibel drum part performed by Kane Ritchotte. The entrance is tentative, then it’s suddenly so loud and blown out it feels overwhelming, particularly arriving this deep into such a subdued album—and soon the drums just consume the entire track. This peak feels at once like a romantic scar and a recognition of the studio’s brute power, showing how a simple rhythm can swallow these woebegone, angsty songs whole. We are keenly aware of the vulnerability of the songwriter and the brute force of the accompaniment, both 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.
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