GENRE; Pop/ Rock
RELEASE DATE; 28 November, 2025
RATING; 4/5
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter return with a quiet, aching marvel: Forever, I’ve Been Being Born is a patient, luminous record that feels both weathered and newly minted. The album, the band’s first full-length since 2011’s Marble Son — unfurls across ten songs that dwell in a space between folk, psychedelia and elegiac rock, and its restraint is its greatest instrument.
From the gauzy opener “Feather Treasure” through the title cut’s slow, breathing resolve, Sykes’ voice is the album’s gravitational centre: fragile when it needs to be, ferocious in its honesty. Phil Wandscher’s guitars frame these moments with a mixture of shimmering arpeggios and brittle, countrified edges, producing a sound that’s at once intimate and expansively cinematic. The production keeps arrangements spare enough to let the lyrics — meditations on mortality, memory and small mercies land with weight.
The duet-feel single “Gentle Chaperone,” featuring Marissa Nadler, is a standout: their harmonies unfurl like a late-night conversation and set the tone for the record’s elegiac mood. Elsewhere, tracks such as “I Still Hear Lorelei” and “Dead End Pools” shift between lullaby calm and subtle, uneasy tension, showing Sykes’ knack for turning personal observation into universal ache.
Critically, the album has been received as a comeback that honors the band’s past while moving forward with quiet confidence — reviewers call it haunting, reflective, and deeply humane and the release (out 28 November 2025 on Ideologic Organ / Southern Lord) feels like a long-awaited gift rather than a comeback stunt. For listeners who crave melody wrapped in melancholy, this is a record that rewards slow, repeated listening.
