This one gives me goosebumps.
Don’t Jump The Gun starts with a propulsive rhythm and Sfven’s browbeaten vocals. “Patience: you always said I should be patient”, the Derby musician sings, before quickly embracing his own fallibility.
As a sufferer of anxiety and insecurity, there is something about Don’t Jump The Gun that resonates for me. I have experienced a feeling on multiple occasions where my expectations, or reading into a situation, positive or negative, can sometimes be many magnitudes greater than another person’s. Here Sfven wrestles with instinctively wanting more, and yet trying to be at peace in-the-moment, taking pleasure in that “part of the magic”, as he sings here.
If the verse is the internal strife, then the chorus is the exhilarating rush in the moments where you just manage to be present. This is the kind of soaring emotive moment that feels like it has no right being jammed in the middle of a sub-three-minute indie pop song like Don’t Jump The Gun, and yet I just love it. Sfven has created a record that gets me and, for just a moment, it feels like everything is okay.
Having spent much of his time in Leeds, collaborating with friends from college, Sfven signed to 3 Beat Records before starting work on his debut album in the Scottish Highlands last year. A low-fi approach led to the release of Forest Avenue, an album that evoked the soft acoustics of early Bon Iver. Now Sfven is back, and Don’t Jump The Gun is the first of ten new singles. If the rest of those singles are anywhere near as wonderful as Don’t Jump The Gun, I truly can’t wait... Patience be damned.