Jakob Nowell drops new Jakobs Castle song “2 Hours Ago”

Today, Jakob Nowell — son of the late Bradley Nowell of Sublime — has released a song of insouciance titled “2 Hours Ago.” The song comes from his solo project Jakobs Castle, and is set to release its debut album, ENTER: THE CASTLE, on April 12th via Epitaph Records.

The hyperpop-adjacent song echoes nostalgia for the “no fucks given” attitude that was present back in 1990’s punk rock, but is filtered through Nowell’s modern and irreverent musicality.

“What I think is cool about punk rock music wasn’t just the sounds, it was the ideal, the realness. And there’s nothing more real than kids making insane-sounding music in their bedrooms nowadays,” Nowell explains. “I wanted to capture that spirit, that DIYness, and mold it into a song that has genuine heart behind it.”

On the surface, the song’s lyrics offer a lesson in the art of being unbothered – written about a drunken girlfriend that just couldn’t get her act together. But digging deeper, Jakobs Castle lowers the drawbridge into the mind of an intelligent, wildly interesting songwriter.

Listen to “2 Hours Ago” below.

Created with producer and co-collaborator Jon Joseph (Børns, Caroline Rose), Nowell describes each song on ENTER: THE CASTLE like an experiment. He’s not chasing trends or trying to make music that fits into a mold. Jakobs Castle songs are a weird amalgamation of Nowell’s favorite, often contrary, things – like transforming Japanese instruments into guitar-sounding upstrokes or turning a melody from a weird piece of emo-rap reverb. “The goal of the project is infiltration. I want to infiltrate different scenes and make very weird music that is also palatable,” he said.

Growing up in Southern California, the only child of Bradley Nowell and progeny of one of the most influential bands of the 90s in Sublime, Jakob Nowell never knew his father, who passed away of a drug overdose when he was just 11 months old. The chaotic household of his youth subjected Nowell to a party lifestyle at a young age. In the absence of normal parentage while growing up in the late 90s and early 2000s, his caretaker became the internet and its bubbling subcultures.

“For a long time I felt really alone and art became a form of escapism,” Jakob explains. “I would connect with a piece of media, and it was like I found my own community of like-minded weirdos that understood. Jakobs Castle is my way of sending out my own weak single into the void. If even one person understands the references and feels a connection, my work is complete.”

In addition to his solo work with Jakobs Castle, news broke in January that original Sublime band members Eric Wilson and Bud Gaugh will reunite with Jakob Nowell as the frontman of Sublime at Coachella Music Festival. Furthermore, now more than six years sober himself, Jakob Nowell is a board member of The Nowell Family Foundation, a nonprofit offering addiction recovery services to the music community with a residential recovery facility dubbed Bradley’s House.

“The only way I’m ever going to stand on my own two feet as an artist is not by completely ignoring [Sublime] and also not by completely embracing it,” he told his hometown paper, the Long Beach Post. “It lies somewhere in the middle, I think – that middle path of authenticity.”

Jakobs Castle is currently mid-way through a 40-date tour with G. Love & Special Sauce. Upcoming concert highlights include Los Angeles, CA on March 2 at Troubadour; San Francisco, CA on March 6 at the Independent; and Seattle, WA on March 9 at The Showbox, before a four-date Colorado run that concludes in Boulder, CO on March 16 at the Fox Theatre.

For concert tickets and more information, visit jakobscastle.com.

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