Jessica Winter, Portsmouth’s underground queer pop auteur, opens her first album as if she’s starring in a ghoulish David Bowie western – but all quickly ascends into a fit of indulgent farmyard cathedral electronica. Winter’s always been on pop’s fringe, but even accustomed listeners will find unscratched parts of their brains scratched. ‘Nirvana’ marks the beginning of this whiplashing glam-pop debut, the plainly titled ‘My First Album’, that rarely strays from its goal of being really good fun and, frankly, a little bit weird.
Its predecessor – Winter’s third EP, 2023’s theatrical ‘Limerance’ – was a grandiose expression of blinding infatuation that cemented her status with NME as “the UK’s most exciting alt-pop oddball” and collated all her legendary amalgamate influences (ranging from Elton John to Kraftwerk to A. G. Cook). It also introduced the Jessica behind the pop prodigy: a thirty-something anxious woman urgently avoiding various forms of heartache.
‘My First Album’, titled like a lovelorn teen bookending a diary, is equally as baring of the maniacal, unhealed corners of Winter’s emotional motivations, even more inclined to face them. That’s not to say it’s morose or depressive by a long shot – to reiterate, the album is really good fun – not least because Winter was on a mission to “see how sad [she] can make something sound” while remaining euphoric.
Lead single ‘L.O.V.E.’, for example, paints insatiable love-addiction over a goose-bumping anthem, while ‘Feels Good (For Tonight)’ is catharsis written in bright Kylie Minogue shades of nu-disco; it’s certainly more palatable than ‘Nirvana’ suggests ‘My First Album’ might be, but no less brilliant. Later, she sings in extraterrestrial Bowie tonality “I’ll always be the worst person in the world,”, on glam-pop cut ‘Worst Person In The World’, continuing, “So we should be together / ‘Cause it don’t get any better.” A signposting, if any, of the record’s blueprint: queer neuroticism and insecurity, but hopelessly, devotedly romanticised.
Using a colourful mix of nostalgic queer pop linguistics, Winter’s debut is stylishly referential – paying tribute to decades of queer millennial favourites – and at moments where she might be pinned down, she pulls the rug. Where second single ‘All I Ever Really Wanted’ glistens in electroclash sensibility and third release ‘Wannabe’ rides 4 Non Blondes-style alt-rock, ‘Aftersun’ deals in tropical euro-disco. Meanwhile, its fifth drop, power-pop glam-rock standout ‘Big Star’, replicates noughties gender-benders Scissor Sisters, MIKA and The Feeling, cementing her stake in the campy queer pop game.
‘My First Album’ is an impassioned and idiosyncratic patchwork, one which paints a portrait of anxious and wistful personhood that is, on the contrary, definitive and assured. It’s a lesson in self-embodiment, with Winter positing that only by embracing her nature will she purge it – an overt decision to move forward with her lofty desires intact, told via the confident pop brush strokes of her predecessors. “Something could happen / And someday I’ll be a somebody,” she ponders over wistful piano keys at the bridge of ‘Big Star’. “Then I’ll be happy / ‘Cause it all wasn’t just a dream.”
Details
- Record label: Lucky Number
- Release date: 11 July, 2025