Westerman announces new album, A Jackal’s Wedding, out 7 November
“[Westerman] spreads himself wide across his music, forming a tapestry of rich textures and deep introspection. His songs become small fires on a starless night.” – Pitchfork
Westerman – the project of Will Westerman – announces his new album, A Jackal’s Wedding, out 7 November 2025 via Partisan Records, and releases its lead single, “Adriatic.” The otherworldly A Jackal’s Wedding is humid and nocturnal, shaped by constant transition. Written largely in Athens and recorded over five weeks on the Greek island of Hydra with producer Marta Salogni (Björk, The xx, Sampha, English Teacher), A Jackal’s Wedding is deeply influenced by place and the sensation of being a newcomer again and again.
Completed shortly after Westerman’s second album, 2023’s An Inbuilt Fault, A Jackal’s Wedding gestated in a time of moving from London to Greece (his home for several years before a recent move to Milan), providing a rich new environment and a new set of themes and concerns. He drew upon his unfamiliar surroundings to work his way into the album’s central concept: We can never really hit pause on real life, and things never get so predictable or stable as we’d like to think. Instead, it is all flux, forever punctuated by tiny moments of stillness, awe, harmony.
To create A Jackal’s Wedding, Westerman and Salogni holed up at the Old Carpet Factory, a ramshackle, yet beautiful 17th century mansion converted into an arts space and studio. They embraced the chaotic space fully, arriving equipped with only a drum machine, and relying on the studio’s extensive backline to craft the album’s mesmerising array of synth sounds. The environment of Hydra itself imposed additional limitations. It was 43°C, and they had to keep the windows open at all times; daytime recordings still bear the hum of the cicadas outside, and otherwise they had to toil through the sweltering quiet of the night. “Allowing the restrictions of the place, it becomes an elemental part of what you’re doing,” Westerman says. “The record is authentic by necessity.”
Today’s synth-drenched lead single “Adriatic” presents Westerman experimenting with whole new moods and atmospheres. Anchored by a deceptively simple synth motif that loops like a mantra, the song gradually unfolds into an immersive swirl of layered vocals and shifting textures. Westerman transforms his voice throughout, slipping between registers and personas. As the arrangement expands and contracts, he balances abstraction with emotional clarity, delivering a song that feels both elusive and deeply familiar.
Westerman comments, “I wrote “Adriatic” while failing at moving to Greece. I was trying to break outside of the confines of my immediate physical reality. Life is full of practical limitations in terms of having a body, or what you can afford in terms of money, etc. but you can always go to a place in your head where everything is possible, and the song is a celebration of reclaiming that. I hadn’t written anything for a long time. I got very depressed after my first record, the whole experience was just so bad that I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to make music anymore. Writing this song was taking back ownership of that creative space which is just my thing and it’s powerful. There are periods in everybody’s life where they feel like maybe they don’t have any control over anything. It’s the realisation that there’s a part of you that they can’t get to unless you allow for it, and you can always keep that space, even if it’s buried, it doesn’t go away as long as you remember that it’s there.”
Listen to “Adriatic” here and watch the video below.
Westerman wraps fragments of his own experiences in characters – some trepidatious of unknown possibilities and some invigorated. As each of these characters embark on their own voyages, so too do the snapshots sketch an arc for Westerman himself, growing to a newfound sense of comfort with the ground constantly shifting beneath our feet, the idea that everything is always changing around us out of our control. “I see this as a process of continually learning,” he says. Everything is in motion, Westerman leaving and revisiting farflung homes, evolving then evolving again, seeing things that shouldn’t exist, returning with an album that could only come from him.
This Autumn, Westerman will support Nation of Language on their North American, EU, and UK tour, with a London show at Roundhouse on 12 November 2025. A full list of dates is below, and tickets are available here.
A Jackal’s Wedding Tracklist:
1. S. Machine
2. About Leaving
3. Adriatic
4. Mosquito
5. Spring
6. PSFN
7. Nevermind
8. Agnus Dei
9. Nature of a Language
10. Weak Hands
11. You Are Indelibly Where I Sleep
Westerman Tour Dates
(all dates supporting Nation of Language)
Wed. Oct. 8 – Vancouver, BC @ The Pearl
Thu. Oct. 9 – Seattle, WA @ Showbox
Fri. Oct. 10 – Seattle, WA @ Showbox
Sat. Oct. 11- Portland, OR @ Revolution Hall
Mon. Oct. 13 – San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore
Wed. Oct. 15 – Los Angeles, CA @ Fonda Theatre
08 Sat. Nov. 8 – Manchester, UK @ O2 Ritz
Sun. Nov. 9 – Glasgow, UK @ St. Luke’s
Tue. Nov. 11 – Cardiff, UK @ Tramshed
Wed. Nov. 12 – London, UK @ Roundhouse
Fri. Nov. 14 – Paris @ Elysee Montmartre
Sat. Nov. 15 – Amsterdam, NL @ Melkweg
Sun. Nov. 16 – Nijmegen, NL @ Doornroosje
Tue. Nov. 18 – Cologne, DE @ Gloria
Wed. Nov. 19- Hamburg, DE @ Uebel & Gefaehrlich
Fri. Nov. 21 – Berlin, DE @ Columbiahalle
Sat. Nov. 22 – Munich, DE @ Technikum
