2025 Number 3: Jacob Roberge

Gemma's Top Ten Albums of 2025

Number 3: Jacob Roberge - The Passing 

I can’t help but feel my own generation has produced relatively few progressive rock stars. There’s plenty of gen-X proggers to go around, while us burnt-out, avocado-munching, diamond-mine destroying prog millenials have very little to our name. True to form, probably. But at least the new generation is showing promise.

Take Jacob Roberge here. He’s a twenty-year-old French Canadian, too young to have seen Spock’s Beard with Neal, the same way I was too young to have seen Marillion with Fish. He’s been killing it on YouTube for a while, and he’s made one of the most impressive, accomplished debut albums I’ve heard in a while.

The songs ebb and flow with great sensitivity, a lot of piano, occasional harder edges and a great ear for composition. Jacob has some of his roots in classical music, and it shows. What strikes me most is the extremely high production values, almost unheard of in an independent debut album. Like yesterday’s Jonas Lindberg, he’s listened a lot to Neal Morse, but whereas Jonas is mostly incluenced by his sound and vibe, Jacob takes his arranging and composing style in his own direction.

But there’s a poise to it all, an elegance, like he’s not quite going all out… until the last song. You have to admire the ambition of an artist who lets his debut album end, not just on an epic, but a ruddy 30 minute one! I’ve seen this go badly wrong before, but Jacob here completely knocks it out of the park. The Passing is an instant classic, full of brilliant transitions and a dynamic range that every prog master would take their hat off to. Clearly this is where his strength lies. I hope it will be celebrated as the great work it is, my single favourite song of the year and one I see myself play many times more after the year is done.

If this is your first album, it’s an amazing achievement. Doesn’t talent skip a generaton?