What an incredible newcomer. Following the West Coast scene of the 2000s and 2010s, you can also feel the shadow of the late Mac Miller — a dazzling new kind of pop. The cover artwork is by ex-Gang Gang Dance's Brian Degraw, so if that rings a bell, definitely check this out. (Shhhhh)

The solo project of Graham Jonson, a 20-year-old wunderkind based in Portland, Oregon, has completed a new album after signing to Ghostly.
He began playing piano as a small child, discovered J Dilla's music in fifth grade, and was self-releasing singles by age 16 — an extremely early start to his musical life. After first appearing under the name "quickly, quickly" in 2017, he built a fervent following in the beat-oriented corners of SoundCloud, YouTube, and Reddit. Some of his early tracks have surpassed 10 million plays on Spotify, but the numbers hardly capture how deeply Graham's work has resonated without any traditional industry connections. His career is a DIY internet success story of a singular talent, yet by his own assessment at 20, he's only just now getting serious. On this Ghostly International debut, "The Long and Short of It," Graham reframes his project as a full-fledged songwriter, vocalist, and arranger, playing nearly everything himself from drums to keyboards to guitar. The sound spans jazz, hip hop, R&B, and psych-pop, pointing toward a path completely free of genre.

Graham has long been devoted to the Stones Throw catalog (his favorite being Madlib's "Quasimoto"), but at the foundation lies an exploration of rhythm. Within the new palette of organic instrumentation and verse-chorus structures, he trusts his instincts; the way tracks glide and bounce with careful attention to tempo highlights his knack for scene-setting and storytelling. Where his earlier work was largely bedroom-made beat music suited to passive listening, here he channels the skills honed in that niche into a style that asks for more active engagement — expressed through memorable songs, eye-opening production, and sincere, genre-crossing songwriting.

The opener "Phases" features the album's only guest vocal, from noted poet and activist Sharrif Simmons, who improvised a psychedelic verse on cosmic existentialism during the session. As the intense spoken word unfolds, Micah Hummel's drum groove and Elliot Cleverdon's strings ring out feverishly, energetically backing Graham's mic and keys. The song's latter half shifts into a hypnotic instrumental, drums intertwining with guitar lines, pausing for a languid stretch before rebuilding at double strength and giving way to a blissfully cathartic sax solo from Hailey Niswanger.

The next song, "Come Visit Me," was written for Graham's girlfriend — a simple, sweet, homesick plea to have her with him in Los Angeles, a city he was quietly struggling to adjust to. He ultimately returned to Portland after 11 months and scrapped many of the songs he'd made in LA. But a few survived, including this tender, bass-groove-driven slow jam, to which he added a verse written from his perspective two years later.

"Shee" was written on his girlfriend's guitar, and every phrase glows with simple love. Drifting in the daydream haze of strings and humming, you're pulled into the looping drums of "Leave It." Over a crisp rhythm, piano and guitar stack up before flowing into a sublime ambient psychedelic jazz outro. On "I Am Close To The River," he returns to the piano to break out of a creative rut. The song appears to be based on a spiritual experience he had along the Willamette River; he wrote it down on paper as soon as he got home, then took his time crafting a pastoral arrangement mixing shimmering chimes, saturated percussion, and orchestral strings by Elliot Cleverdon.

A highlight of the album's second half, "Everything is Different (To Me)" packs in new hallmarks all at once — a catchy guitar loop, a classic hip hop drum break, surging strings, sly chord changes — all in contrast to lyrics chronicling his slide into apathy. Late in the record, "Wy" moves from a series of heartfelt questions into an expansive outro built from airy synthesizers, his contemplative guitar, and the calming sound of water droplets, and the closing "Otto's Dance" ends things with a brief instrumental afterglow reminiscent of one of his favorite Brazilian albums, Milton Nascimento and Lô Borges' "Clube da Esquina."

"The Long and Short of It" captures the transitions, self-affirmation, and great leap forward in a young artist's life. An all-out new album where 20-year-old Gen Z prodigy quickly, quickly comes fully into his own.

TRACK LIST:

01. Phases (ft. Sharrif Simmons)
02. Come Visit Me
03. Interlude
04. Shee
05. Leave It
06. I Am Close to the River
07. Feel
08. A Conversation
09. Everything is Different (To Me)
10. Wy
11. Otto's Dance