Since launching the project in 2017, Jim D’Angelo has quietly built a body of work under the name Don’t Blink, culminating in his latest release, Church. Across nine sprawling tracks, D’Angelo sketches out an aesthetic that feels refreshingly difficult to classify. It’s a welcome anomaly in a world that loves its tidy genre tags.
Church hums with a sincerity that’s hard to fake. D’Angelo writes about love, loss, and all the liminal spaces in between, but there’s a disarming plainness to the way he approaches these themes. It’s about observation and captures the messy, minor-key emotions that usually slip between the cracks of pop songwriting.
Church leans into a lo-fi sensibility, but it never feels careless. The rough edges give the songs a sort of weathered intimacy, like transmissions from a small room at the end of the world. The guitar work is idiosyncratic and slightly askew and threads through the album like a nervous system, while the bass often steps forward, becoming the unexpected gravitational center of several tracks. Subtle touches of organ and drums round out the arrangements, locking into grooves that feel both homespun and quietly hypnotic.
D’Angelo’s real gift lies in finding emotional colors that feel rare and a little bruised. It’s the kind of grayish tones that introduce ambiguity. Standouts like “Over and Over,” “The Truth of You,” and “Grey Skies” distill this approach beautifully, balancing melancholy with a stubborn sense of wonder.
Church contains songs that feel like private conversations you just happened to overhear. In a world chasing louder ways to be noticed, Don’t Blink offers something far more enduring: honesty, patience, and a world all its own.