Album Review: The Pure Joy Of Jumping by Drook
“Believe you’re never too much”
Emotion, by its nature, is overwhelming. Various stimuli trigger a cascade of chemicals in your body, some acting as defense mechanisms, others as rewards. The goal here is balance–simple joys, stable moods, a rested mind. But in reality, it operates within a system shaped over thousands of years, a framework that a few hundred years of social evolution have rendered outdated. We don’t just savor a single joy and remain content. Instead, we chase dopamine, feeding into the base addictive tendencies of sentient life, like a wild animal gorging itself on a newly discovered food source. We don’t use our defense mechanisms to push away sadness; we wallow in it, grieving tangible and abstract losses far beyond what the mind can handle. These stimuli often stretch beyond their limits, blurring together at the edges until we’re left with a suffocating sense of constant sensation: every new opportunity a simultaneous chance for both euphoria and sorrow.
The music of Drook reflects this idea, capturing both its heated maelstroms and blissful overloads. Lavish in some respects, providing joy in every corner, yet splintered in others, exposing the chaotic undercurrent surging beneath the surface. It’s both comforting and unsettling, pulling you into its complexities without hesitation. One moment, you’re lost in the music, the next, in the raw emotions it stirs.
The trio’s album, The Pure Joy Of Jumping–winner of the 2025 Newlin Music Prize winner–embodies this contradictory allure, its title serving as a striking metaphor for both bliss and surrender. It embodies that moment of clarity in a head-first dive, where the outcome remains uncertain, yet undeniably exhilarating. Electronica sprawls over the dream pop world the trio explored so passionately on previous releases, imbuing that sonic terrain with a new dimension of intrigue. Every note and beat hides a new depth, with quiet pauses that take your breath away and electrifying bursts of passion that leave a lasting resonance.
Listening to this record evokes this impulsive embrace, whether you approach it casually or with a more focused ear. Casual engagement offers plenty of surprises and delights, with earworms that nestle snuggly in alongside a few haunting lyrics that penetrate with their poignancy. But listen more intently, and you’ll start to uncover a clear vision, as each track seems to follow a winding path that, by the end of the album, reveals itself as deliberate and thoughtfully fashioned.
Opening with “Sprinter” and moving straight into “Humdrum” is key in this regard, setting the tone with two completely different musical expressions that both hover over this idea of infatuation and affection as a parasitic entity, something previous songs from the band like “She” and “Habitual Pressure” touch down upon with different inflections. In one space, it’s frenetic, manic, and boisterous. In another, it’s passionate, vulnerable, and engrossing. “Sprinter” represents the striking electronica blend at play in their music, while “Humdrum” showcases their lush dream pop sound, two diverging opening statements from Drook. Initially, they feel disconnected before later intertwining with subtle force on the title track, a song with an atmosphere that feels drenched in natural emotion but fractured by digital compulsion.
“Do I tell this girl I’m on the borderline? How do I tell this girl I’m on the border?” Liza Grishaeva contemplates, standing at the intersection of the band’s blended sound and her own emotional crossroads. Should she commit to direct honesty or retreat behind guarded vulnerability? This tension is reflected in their music, where some of the record’s most impactful lines are whispered or hidden behind layers of glitchy distortion, while more forceful expressions emerge only as stray thoughts. It’s a nuanced contrast within the music, one that draws your ear to the hidden frequencies woven into their sublime sound. The question arises: what more is there to discover when we dive deeper into the mix?
“Girls Around Me” tempers this daring approach with a straightforward reverie, while “Swimming” retreats even further inward, featuring one of the most pensive guitar hooks of recent memory. Electronic elusions creep into that track before asserting control again on “Forever.” However, here, the tone shifts from the sonic intensity of the album’s opener to one that is emotionally dynamic, with the band infusing the same compelling pathos into this new sonic landscape that they’ve so masterfully navigated in their earlier work.
This opens up with “All Of Your Thoughts,” the album’s standout track that feels like a breathtaking inhale of all the vibrant expression accumulated throughout. Built over a triad guitar line that subtly mimics a dreamy waltz hidden within a steady 4/4 beat, the song is a gossamer observation of obsession, hope, and surrender. It serves as an ode to those lingering thoughts that creep in during solitude, only to be washed away by connection–a reflection of an unbalanced existence, hinted at in the song’s tense, uneasy intro.
“If I could run through you and fall into all of your thoughts,” Grishaeva muses on the song’s ascendant chorus. It’s the album’s most exuberant moment, but also its most measured, with Matthew Shultz, Tyler Smith, and Grishaeva allowing the emotion to occupy the space fully, offering only subtle melodic and rhythmic touches. The sound bears resemblance to 2022’s Life In Estates, yet it would seem oddly misplaced within that album’s broader context, stifled by its more pensive introspection. Here, it’s granted the freedom to truly soar, making its way into the ether with its own gravitational pull that draws in every emotion and makes it its own, bending them not toward clarity, but toward openness–ready to embrace whatever comes next. This sense of release is captured most poignantly in the aching realization Grishaeva expresses during the song’s freefall into doubt, only to be realigned back onto its cosmic course after it’s voiced: “You’re in all of mine.”
Of course, not all of the emotion captured in The Pure Joy Of Jumping relates to desire. “America, My Window” distills the messy reality of living in a regressive state, juxtaposing gun violence with images of boundless love–establishment-sanctioned carnage and state-maligned passion in a distorted display of contradiction. “Everybody, Me And Ethan’s Party” pulls inward, facing hidden shames and inadequacies during what should have been a night of celebration, a stark contrast to the album’s more exuberant moments. Personal shortcomings surface alongside raw reflections on the messy inter dynamics of being in a band, grappling with painful line-up changes and the weight of unattainable expectations.
“Everybody sees the band doing fine\ We almost broke up but we changed our minds,” Grishaeva confesses, a notion that, while familiar in the world of popular music, takes on a deeper weight in this context. It’s followed shortly by the existential dread that haunts both creators and consumers alike: “Will I be poor when I die?\ Will anybody read what I write?” Much like in “All Of Your Thoughts,” the music allows these dense, conflicting thoughts to roam freely, sprawling in a stream-of-consciousness that seems to settle into a place of despair. Limbo sets in on “Texas / Awful Stories,” as a disorienting digital deluge begins to flood in once again (“I’ve been a liar all my life / I’m calling you to tell you I don’t know / I’m in some kind of heaven / Can you recall how it feels?“). This track, while freeing in its release of the despair felt in the previous one, is also thrillingly unruly, spiraling out into a surreal recounting played almost as a hypnotic aria—seemingly out of place, but once more submitting to the totality of emotions, even the capricious and amorphous ones.
“Holiday!” falls in last, bringing the dream pop back to a cathartic high, like a final exhale after a whirlwind of emotions. The song is an invocation of release and detachment, a reclaiming of space and self after sifting through the chaos of ephemeral connection. As the song builds, the crashing waves of sound mirror the exhilaration of letting go–jumping finally, embracing the messiness of life while acknowledging that it’s never quite enough to tie everything together. The repeated declaration of wanting a holiday serves as both escape and respite, an invitation to step outside the disarray of the present moment and breathe. Within that breath, though, is an underlying truth: no matter how much we shed, more awaits us. More to experience, more to confront, more to feel. It’s a reminder that life, in all its tangled chaos, is endless in its potential… just like the emotions we navigate, always asking for more while offering an endless spectrum of new highs and lows to explore.
Indeed, the sounds and sentiments of The Pure Joy Of Jumping are overwhelming, yet they need not be intimidating. What Drook creates here is a welcoming entrance into a world where anxiety and satisfaction coexist, each pushing the other toward the next intense peak. “Believe you’re never too much,” Grishaeva counsels on “All Of Your Thoughts,” a sentiment that echoes throughout every facet of life. You’re not too much. Life is. Too much to endure. Too much to savor. Too much, it seems, to live. But for all of those still living, we are never too much, because there’s always room for more… a truth revealed in vibrant detail on The Pure Joy Of Jumping.
The Pure Joy Of Jumping is out now on all streaming platforms. For more updates, make sure to follow Drook on social media.
