The Australian music industry is mourning Western Sydney singer-songwriter Jack Colwell following his sudden passing, just over a week after he promised a new album was coming.
Colwell died on Thursday night, aged 34, with news.com.au reporting his cause of death is still unknown.
He revealed on his Facebook page on September 24 that his second album was in its final stages of mixing and mastering “sometime soon”.
“Hi all – looking forward to releasing some new music soon. The mixes are nearly done and the mastering is booked in. I’ve been saying for ages that LP2 will be with you soon and that day isn’t too far off!”
Colwell finished recording the album in May and posted a studio video of him using an egg shaker back in August.
The album was set to follow his debut from 2020, Swandream, which was produced by Sarah Blasko and lauded by critics.
Blasko took to Instagram to mourn Caldwell, saying he had “a music spirit like no other”.
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“One of my favourite people in this whole wide world, who possessed the charm of a thousand princes & a musical spirit like no other has passed into another realm. Good night darling Jack, changed forever by your presence x”.
Music writer Father McKenzie took to X to declare his love for Swandream, saying that one day it would “be given its place as one of the great Australian debut albums. I said this to him in 2020 and I stand by those words now. But more importantly, Jack Colwell was a great man. RIP.”
Colwell seemed to start work on the follow-up to Swandream during the Covid-19 lockdown in 2021. He took to Twitter in October that year sharing the challenges he had faced and how he had come out the other side.
“Entered lockdown having a mental breakdown,” he wrote. Decided to stop drinking during the lockdown, have exercised every single day and am now somehow leaving the picture of health also with a new album and a bunch of short stories.”
In an obituary published by The Guardian, friend Jenny Valentish described him as “generous and loyal, almost to a fault”, and an artist who “embraced big emotions and high dramatics”.
“He was a one-man séance, cresting operatic highs and frightening the horses with guttural, primal lows,” Valentish wrote.
“Visually, he was a vision board of romantic leads, from a knight in shining armour eating an ice-cream sundae, to a shirtless dreamboat swooning into a bed of flowers.”
Out and proud at an early age, Colwell amassed a huge following within the LGBTIQ+ community.
Broadcaster and former partner Mitch Feltsheer said in a tribute on X: “Jack Colwell was an amazing talent, a beautiful vibrant soul and he was also my first ever boyfriend. I can’t believe he’s gone but grateful that I was lucky enough to know him. Fuck. It sucks so much.”
Other tributes on social media paid tribute to Colwell’s immense talent, fearless creativity and loyalty as a friend. Frenzal Rhomb’s Lindsay McDougall simply wrote on X: “Jack rules. This sucks.”
