By the flames of Jake Cassman’s October Burning, from his LP Making an attempt to Mourn a Good friend of Mine, there’s sufficient ambiguity to shape-shift it right into a parable for the Anthropocene because it cracks underneath warmth and stress, or a vignette of lives frayed by the shortage of security nets and the comforts you thought have been a given. Whichever thread you pull from the conceptual tableau, one fact stays: Jake Cassman’s knack for constructing panoramas of emotion makes him the sort of boy-next-door troubadour it’s dangerously simple to fall for.
His voice reaches with an open hand for connection, tying the tangled dots of the human situation into lucid kind. Every lyrical line lands with readability, by no means overburdened by metaphor, but wealthy with poetic weight. The light melodic sway of his Americana-kissed indie pop rock signature holds the sort of heat you solely really feel when slipping by way of your entrance door after a weary roadrip; worn out, scuffed up, however safely residence.
With out chasing reinvention, Cassman nonetheless manages to ship uncooked authenticity with composure and command. All of it provides as much as a daring assertion of what makes him some of the affecting artists gracing the 2025 airwaves.
Raised on Elton John, however fuelled by the DIY spirit after educating himself Inexperienced Day riffs when the sheet music classes fell brief, Cassman now traverses the spectrum from duelling pianos to political songwriting and podcast manufacturing, pulling his voice from each nook of his lived expertise. October Burning is one other testomony to how he’s forging areas for listeners to really feel seen inside.
October Burning is now accessible on all main streaming platforms, together with Spotify.
– Evaluation by Amelia Vandergast