MUSIC REVIEW: HURB JEPHASUN – IN THE END EP

MUSIC REVIEW: HURB JEPHASUN – IN THE END EP
October 2026
Independent
Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar
86%

The act of creation is pivotal for any artist, but how do we know when a work is complete? As both a painter and musician Hurb Jephasun (The Beautiful Losers, The Polite Society, Potato Stars and more) listens to his inner muse, and on his new EP In The End he’s recorded four new songs so sparsely – with his piano and cracked vocals front and centre, little else to distract them other than some simple percussion or a little synth – that the songs are left to stand or fall on their own merits.

And what merits they are: these are tracks of fragile beauty, longing and yearning, memorable melodies of relationship loss and heartache that brings to mind a crossroad between Nick Cave, Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen.    

When Jephasun sings “I’m lost, and I can’t go home” on opener Lost, “mistakes made all come back at you, there’s nothing you can do, in the end” on In The End, his voice raw and imbued with sadness, we believe him with absolute, inherent understanding.

These are songs that tap into the carnage of love, the debris of our pasts, and they have a universal quality because no matter how happy and content we are now, most of us experienced at least one relationship which soured and curdled, twisting our hearts into a pretzel-like mess.

Final track The First Time is nothing less than haunting: a tale of possibly unrequited love, of wanting someone’s caress more than anything in the world, and Jephasun’s vocal shakes with both desire and disappointment, loneliness and despair. “All I want, all I need, is for you, to want me, like I want you.” Been there.

Category: CD Reviews