JAMIE WOON - 3, 10, Why, When

What the hell was that?!
Well, I guess I’m still intact
Coming to terms with plans I didn’t have
Now that I’ve begun
Now I know pain is never done

For Jamie Woon, time has a largely Tibetan meaning. But the ten-year sabbatical that took the English singer-songwriter far away from (his) world hides contours that are anything but spiritual.
Woon spent days, months and finally years at the mercy of the void that looms when the page stays blank and the pick struggles to dance across the strings. He let this much slip himself, in one of his recent (and rare) social media appearances, later distilled into a press release as terse as it was clear, particularly regarding the role played by producer and friend Martin Terefe: "He saw my struggles and supported me. He somehow convinced me to make an album: we made one song, then another, and when we had ten, we said it was finally a record. I honestly couldn't tell you how to explain this music. For me it's extraordinary that it even exists." Words that hint at an unexpected miracle, it seems, even for Woon himself, who had been silent since the glories of "Making Time", released in 2015, four years after the dazzling debut, "Mirrorwriting", one of the masterpieces of that strange thing called soul-step, helped also by the presence of Burial on one of the London musician's biggest singles, "Night Air".

"3, 10, Why, When": if titles are maps, then Woon is a lousy pirate, because however cryptic it may seem, the alternation of numbers (indicating the release date), verb and adverb says it all about this unhoped-for reappearance. The first two singles, "Heavy Going" and "A Velvet Rope", do even better, showing us that, beyond the "lost" time, Jamie would only come back once everything made musical sense again: the first is a ballad suspended over melodies that are faintly Sylvian-esque, on which Woon sings of unchanging fragility and crying at the moon; the second goes even further, moving at slower tempos, through a scene that is at first lunar and ultimately liberating, painted by a synth that builds an irresistible chorus.
The choice of these first two tracks is anything but random, starting with the emotional weight of the verses and their potential impact, so much so that the other two songs made public early on don't stray from this pattern either: "When" with its "Lady Luck"-like verve, while "Pulling On A Thread" does so through sumptuous strings and a bubbling bassline.

Jamie knows the pain will never end and he's happy to accept it, so he aims not to give in to what was about to drag him to the bottom of the ravine, or to the "bottom of the glass", to paraphrase one of his own metaphors. It's no coincidence that at one point he invokes philosophical maxims like "amor fati".
The light of the four "singles", after all, is the same light that radiates through the other six stops on an album with practically no dips, driven from the first note to the last by an endless desire to be reborn and finally get to the bottom of things, especially the delirium of a midlife that distorts everything. So we get gospel-tinged invocations in "All The Way", shortly before the synthetic dance of "Place N Time". These are songs played, sung and produced with downright meticulous care. And they confirm once again just how obsessive Woon's approach to music is, inherited mostly from his mother, Celtic singer Mae McKenna.

"3, 10, Why, When" moves away from the more elaborate structures of "Making Time", and the reborn Jamie manages to hit the mark even when he decides to work by subtraction, letting himself be accompanied "only" by a drum machine and a looping synth line ("The Heart's Mountain"). The same happens in more elusive moments like "Ghost" or when the class of a postmodern soul crooner resurfaces ("What's The Matter"). And this speaks volumes about the undisputed (and intact) mastery of a musician many had already written off, whose return almost no one believed possible anymore. All that's left now is to hope to hear him live in Italy too, and as soon as possible. Consider the call made.

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01/10/2025