Jody and the Jerms – Love Descends (2025)
While many of us were not at Jody and the Jerm’s debut gig in 2020 at the now-defunct Wheatsheaf, we are still able to enjoy the band’s charismatic music even if it is a few years on; in fact, the energetic presence and confident sounds have improved since 2020 as the UK-based group brings live passion through studio singles. Hailing from Oxford, the six-piece dance across fields of pop with twists, traipses, and swirling pools of style-blurring exuberance. Today, we take a gander at their most recent album, Love Descends.
Unafraid to tackle intimate themes, Jody and the Jerms unpick the eccentricities, complexities and all those other things that we encounter in life with their music. In Love Descends, the six-piece offer several experiences, insights and emotional swells for listeners; kind of like that chocolate box from Forest Gump where you don’t really know what you’re going to get, but you go ahead and taste each sonic chocolate gem anyway. The band shares:
“Love Descends is a personal collection of songs about the many facets of love. Romantic love, the love you feel for friends and family, the complexity of love, falling out of love, unrequited love, heartbreak, love of people, places and memories, learning to love and appreciate your own life. How all these confusing, entangled, extraordinary, hopeful, sometimes inconsolable but always delicately unique sides of love shape our lives and make us the people we are.”
Like each chocolate in this glittering box of romantic exploration, Jody and the Jerms walk through various genres, sounds and styles, making every candy unique and innovative. Opening with ‘Hooch and Happiness’, we are immediately thrust into the world of old-school pop circa the 1980s and 1990s. Fun, upbeat and toe-tapping, the track sparkles with soaring guitars, dynamic drums and a bold bass, plastering a grin on your face. Yet, as much as this sparkling thrill has the high-tempo beat where you can’t help but start dancing, it ticks with a hidden sense of simplicity, boasting the happiness you get from love – or the high from a rum-soaked treat.
Songs like ‘Unraveling’ and ‘Liberation’ retain the joy we heard in ‘Hooch and Happiness’, but Jody and the Jerms demonstrate versatility, bringing you rambunctious rock-noted songs like ‘I Don’t Wanna’, and the melancholy stillness of indie-rock in ‘Divine’. One aspect, however, I have to mention is that while the rise and fall of various 80s-driven pop, rock, and slight post-punk tones highlights a greater sonic palette, the anchoring instrumentation with soulful vocals steadily ticks across each track in a confirming and tender resonation. So, in other words, the chocolates are all different, but the soaring guitars, drums and percussion continuously hold you close with sophisticated ease – no disappointments in this chocolate box.
It’s not easy to choose favourite tracks on any album, but I have to lean toward ‘Given Up Trying’. More obscure and off-kilter than the others, the track has an expansive gleam as each instrument weaves together with harmonic individuality. Reminding me somewhat of The Dresden Dolls, particularly in the bold piano and haunting strings, ‘Given Up Trying’ is a song to stand out amidst an already tantalising rack of stand-out tunes.
Sincere, heartfelt and intimate, Love Descends brims with delicate fragility, intense emotion, and a big smile to top things off. This is my introduction to Jody and the Jerms, and I cannot wait to see what else they have in store.
Find out more about Jody and the Jerms on their official website, Facebook, Instagram and Spotify.
This artist was sent to us by Obsidian PR.
