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You know how they say love is blind? Well, sometimes it’s a losing bet too, and not many know that more than Jahson Paynter, who on his second EP hold me, don’t hold back! continues putting pieces of himself out there anyway despite opening himself up to vulnerability. Moving somewhere in the space of alternative R&B, folk, and textured bedroom pop, this five-track project sits inside the contradictions of loving someone while learning to live more honestly with yourself in the process, and he does it with a voice that’s unguarded from the very first note to the very last. 

The Mississauga-born Paynter grew up in a musical household where his mother was a songwriter, and his father went from rapping to reggae singing, and his aunt is a spoken-word performer with gospel roots. He began rapping as a teenager before discovering his singing voice, and a move to Los Angeles eventually led him to write for other artists, where he realized the stories he was giving away often ended up being his own. Following his 2025 breakout and debut EP Is Anybody Home?! in May, this follow-up project finds us with what you might see as a new version of Jahson Paynter, one who’s done editing himself. 

His adventurous, emotionally unrestrained approach to arrangement recalls Dijon, but his expressive tenor, which stretches and curls around words that sound almost too personal to say aloud, is unmistakably his own. 

One of my favorite moments on this project is “no self respect!” and I really think it makes the EP’s central tension impossible to miss. It opens with little more than golden piano chords and a voice pressed close to the microphone, as Paynter sings about a lover who finds comfort in his coldness while he wonders why he is never the person they lean on. Even his accusations arrive wrapped in tenderness, while the song’s chorus turns loyalty into a liability, with Paynter always having someone’s back and always letting them back in even as every return costs him a little more of himself. 

The full band joins in shortly after on that track, with drums bringing an infectious rhythmic energy (a notable choice from an artist who once leaned toward drum-less records), and the keys swell like a whirlpool pulling you in until the track surges into something closer to ecstasy than heartbreak. His vocals follow in, rising from hush to full-throated plea. The title sounds like an accusation, but the performance itself sounds like self-belief, and the song makes it clear that the hunger driving him is for a kind of love he’s never actually seen. Its central metaphor, love as a lottery in which you spend and lose a piece of yourself every time, is as bruising as it is memorable. 

As a body of work, hold me, don’t hold back! thrives on its refusal to tidy heartbreak into a lesson. Paynter does an incredible job at letting contradiction sit: maybe it’s because he can know a relationship is wrong for him and still mourn the future he imagined in it, and he can be angry at himself for staying and still believe love is worth the risk. There’s a quiet courage in that honesty, and by the time the project wraps, you’re rooting for him to find the love he keeps reaching for. 

Listen to hold me, don't hold back! below: