Jesse Bloodgood – Wishful Thinker (EP Review)

Indie rock singer-songwriter Jesse Bloodgood has a new extended play, Wishful Thinker.  The title sounds interesting, especially if you imagine it as relating to the positive. The Finger Lakes muso writes that his music discusses ‘self-reflection, love & heartbreak, anxiety, depression, addiction and other topics of vulnerability and aspiration for growth’. With that in mind, you get into the review expecting intimate artistry, if you will.

The EP starts with ‘Lighthouse Night Owl’. The track opens with resonant, low-register string chords that carry a distinct organic, percussive timbre. Jesse Bloodgood’s vocals enter early, delivered with a relaxed, baritone-inflected speech-like quality. ‘There’s thunder in the distant clouds’, he sings cleanly, leaning into a measured cadence. Following a deliberate, one-second pause, he returns with the line, ‘In my head, I get a lighting round at best’.”

This atmospheric tension builds until Jesse Bloodgood’s delivery shifts into a soaring, elongated ‘baaaaaby’, signalling a pivot into a dense, enveloping layer of drums and bass. While he momentarily dips back into a lower energy, he primarily maintains this elevated, high-register tone. The track utilizes a recurrent stop-start dynamic in both the vocals and the instrumentation, creating a sense of expanded scale that makes the 3:24 runtime feel more expansive and deliberate. While Jesse Bloodgood handles all vocal duties with range, the composition’s structure is so vast it almost invites the contrast of a second harmonic voice.

Jesse Bloodgood’s songwriting displays a poetic bent. In the song, the lyrical persona addresses a figure as ‘baby’ and ‘honey’, crediting them with bringing a transformative light into an otherwise shadowed world. Most striking is the characterization of this person as a ‘lighthouse night owl’.

The title track follows, opening with guitar chords that soon merge with a resonant, high-impact low end and driving percussion. Jesse Bloodgood enters with the line, ‘Every now and again you breathe a really good breath’, maintaining his signature baritone depth with a delivery that is at once graceful and precisely clipped. As the track progresses, the vocal texture undergoes a notable shift; the initial weight lightens, giving way to a more ethereal, fluid register. This reveals a different facet of Jesse Bloodgood’s artistry, favoring a melodic flow that stands in contrast to the stop-start dynamics of the opener.

Lyrically, the song is replete with beautiful sentiments directed toward the addressee. The persona expresses a deep-seated admiration and gratitude, specifically acknowledging the addressee’s efforts to save them. The track concludes on a poignant note, with Bloodgood’s final declaration, ’Until then and there, I am your wishful thinker’.

‘Tell Me What You Want’ follows, with the vocals making an immediate entrance. The delivery begins with a rugged, textured grit before shifting into a sharper, higher-frequency presence as the track progresses. It is a song defined by its vocal versatility; Bloodgood navigates a range of tonal shifts over a backdrop of glitchy, rhythmic guitar during the build-up. This momentum is punctuated by a deliberate, sparse drum pattern – playing once, then twice – which momentarily suspends the energy.

The track is further layered with a blend of crunchy and bluesy guitar work, creating a rich sonic contrast. While the previous tracks leaned heavily on Bloodgood’s multi-layered vocal presence, here the execution feels more seamless and polished, offering a particularly cohesive and pleasing listening experience.

The song revolves around the ‘tell me what you want’ refrain. While the hook feels easygoing, the verses reveal a lyrical persona grappling with a brutal reality where ‘Dreamers get hurt’ in what is described as a ‘cruel curse’. If the figures throughout the EP have sounded ‘broken’, this persona is as vulnerable as they come; they candidly admit to being jealous and selfish and suggest they are at their best when discouraged. Rather than merely seeing them as broken, it helps to view them as profoundly human, taking meds, for example, to help them cope.

While the lyrics outwardly address a ‘person’, the song feels more like an internal dialogue where the lyrical persona is talking to themselves

The EP closes with ‘Cutting Room Floor’, which introduces a piano-driven arrangement – a notable shift from the previous instrumentation. Lyrically, the track occupies a strange, unsettling space; while it features the familiar female addressee, the focus shifts to a lyrical persona metaphorically or literally on the ‘cutting floor’. One particularly chilling image details ‘your lipstick on a bloody love note’.

The song explores various permutations of the ‘cutting’ concept, suggesting a theme of self-harm, yet it also carries a dual meaning where one part of the duo is cutting the other’s breaks.

SCORE/Good: Jesse Bloodgood undeniably possesses both the vocal command and the songwriting intuition to carry a record. There is a compelling tension in his work; his lyrics lean toward positivity without masking life’s sharper edges – a mixture of optimism and realism that feels both grounded and necessary.

While Bloodgood’s ‘good guy’ persona is an asset, a recurring pattern in the songwriting threatens to settle into a predictable formula. To evolve, the project might benefit from exploring a wider array of lyrical subjects and introducing more diverse personas or addressees. This need for variety extends to the instrumentation as well. While the use of piano on the final track was relatively mundane, its inclusion was a welcome departure that effectively differentiated itself from the arrangements that preceded it.

[We rank singles, EPs, and albums on a scale of Poor, Mediocre, Good, Excellent, and Outstanding]

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