After a long stretch of work in more of a supporting role, Jay Som’s latest solo album is her best music in almost a decade.
Release date: October 10, 2025 | Polyvinyl Record Co. | Website | Bandcamp
Some time had gone by since I had really dived deep into a Jay Som project. Everybody Works is a favorite of mine, one of the better projects of 2017, and it’s still one of the best albums from the big bedroom pop wave of that era, but I normally just listen to a song here and there and move on. Part of that is because out of the numerous artists who got big off that sound (Billie Eilish, Clairo, and Soccer Mommy to three wildly varying degrees), Jay Som’s music was just very slow to move out of that bubble. Belong is only Jay Som’s second major release since 2017 and easily her most gripping and successful effort in tweaking her sound.
Belong hits hard to start the album, and it really gets off to a hot start to pull you in instantly, which is a necessity when you’ve been away for as long as Jay Som has. “Cards On The Table” has a wonderful instrumental – very synthy and bouncy – and it’s a gripping recap of a friendship doomed to communication issues. Much of Belong has an emo/pop-punk flair to it, and you can definitely imagine “Casino Stars” as more of a blown-out and anthemic track, but the stripped-back, mellow atmosphere Jay Som has utilized for most of her music blends incredibly well with the emo aesthetic, and does for most of the album. There’s a bit of a Jack Antonoff vibe (his good work, not his overworked leftovers) to the instrumental of “Drop A” and it’s such an easy listen: reminds me a lot of some of Clairo’s best work.
There’s a couple of great features on Belong, most notably a huge feature from (former?) Paramore lead singer Hayley Williams. Initially, I was a bit worried “Past Lives” would be a bit of a mismatch, where Jay Som’s mellow and at times reserved vocal performance would get overshadowed by Hayley’s much more high-octane vocal capabilities, but they complement each other perfectly. Hayley tones down well on the initial hooks before getting a moment to blow out the scale towards the end, and Jay Som delivers the verses smoothly. Hayley is the bigger guest, but Jimmy Eat World’s Jim Adkins actually provides an even better nostalgic emo banger on “Float”. The simplistic ‘Float, don’t fight’ chorus sounds incredible, and the two pair perfectly for what I think is easily the best track on the album.
The album does run out of momentum towards the end. “Meander / Sprouting Wings” are two minute-ish long ideas that don’t sound entirely finished and frankly sort of seem like they were just glued together to pad the run time. Having “A Million Reasons Why”, which is a more realized concept despite it also being only a little over a minute, follow it up is a pretty glaring sequencing issue and really brings Belong to a dead stop right before the strong closing track in “Want It All”.
The hiccups at the end aside, this is a much better and more rewarding album than I was anticipating. I hadn’t quite moved on from Jay Som, but the releases had become sparse enough that this was rarely an act I had at the front of my mind, so it surprised me a bit for Belong to be as good as it is. Jay Som has always been a strong writer, so the spike in production quality complements her perfectly and results in some of her best tracks to date – and some of the best indie tracks you’ll hear in general this year.
