Smooth Jas is back with their first bit of new music in two years with the release of the gloomily meditative single “Virgo.” After the arrival of their self-titled debut EP Smooth Jas in 2021 — a record that chronicled both their coming of age and musical evolution — the Long Beach artist has garnered a reputation for producing emotionally eviscerating music.
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Their latest offering “Virgo” is a guitar-grumbling stroll through a series of painfully lucid ruminations on life and love. One that begins rather disarmingly as a steady rhythm of rolling riffs and drums, their earnest and urgent roiling punctuating every piercing word of Smooth Jas’ heartwrenching lyricism. The result is a song that fearlessly explores the morose liminal spaces of a relationship with visceral poetics and sonics alike.
“I don’t think I can figure you out / And I don’t think I want to learn how,” they confesses against the elastic bend of its melody. “You crashed into me and you left me feeling full of doubt / But my heart starts to ache every time I have to go without.” Their words capture the exquisite agony that comes with finding yourself irresistibly drawn to unhealthy people or things you can’t bear to be around.
As their aimless angst reaches its boiling point — “So you wander around and run a bath / And wonder if these feelings pass” — a wave of cacophonous guitars comes crashing down. Soaking you in their bitter but cathartic melancholy as Smooth Jas carries on with their unfaltering introspections.
“‘Virgo’ was written by me a year ago and recorded/produced by my dear friend Dylan Wood over the course of this past year,” Smooth Jas explained via Instagram. “We wanted to put everything we could into this recording, and I feel like it is an accurate portrait of my emotional state at the time; full of self doubt and rethinking bad habits, because they felt familiar.”
Words: Steven Ward
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Listen to “Virgo” the new single from Smooth Jas below!
