Will Westerman’s third album begins with “S. Machine,” a song that moves through four or five evolutions before it even truly begins in earnest. It’s a hodgepodge, an amalgamation, stuck between worlds. It’s this latter concept that the British songwriter wanted to capture on his 2025 album A Jackal’s Wedding, which was partially inspired by a burst of sunshine that appeared in the middle of a storm so intense it might as well have been a mirage. Westerman works through what’s real and what’s fictitious, weaving through truth and the imaginary only to realize that what is “real” is often revealed through the lenses we bring to our experiences. Take “Spring,” a stunning piano ballad that finds Westerman simultaneously longing for closeness and a hard reset when it comes to a relationship. “Let me in,” he pleads, before adding, “Seems like you could use a spring cleaning.” Elsewhere, “Nature of a Language” twists a folk guitar pattern into a haunting rumination on the power of words to communicate and fail to do so.