Jaguero: Chasing The Spark In The Noise

With Make Me Feel Alive Again, Jaguero step into their first full-length with urgency, heart, and a refusal to play it safe. Blending punk energy, emo tension, and a raw, unfiltered emotional core, the Italian band are carving out a sound that feels both immediate and hard to pin down. As they begin to reach beyond their local scene and connect with a wider audience, we caught up with Jaguero to talk about identity, pressure, vulnerability, and what it really means to feel alive again.

Make Me Feel Alive Again” feels like more than just an album title; it sounds almost like a reaction to something. What were you trying to come back to, or recover from, when you started writing this record?

“With everything happening in the world and the way society is shifting, we all feel the need to return to a more stable reality. In our case, that means reconnecting with ourselves and processing what happens to us. This album is pursuing why we write music: we let out everything we feel, in different shapes and colours based on what we are going through.”

Your sound pulls from punk, emo, grunge, and something more unpredictable underneath it all. Do you ever feel pressure to define it, or is the refusal to fit into a clear genre part of the point?

“We don’t feel any pressure at all. We are interested in a huge variety of musical genres and we go to a lot of gigs, but we all agree that defining a genre, or letting ourselves be defined by one, completely dilutes the project.”

A lot of the record deals with tension between self-determination and external expectations. In your experience, is that conflict something you’ve grown out of, or something you’ve learned to live inside of?

“Probably both. As people, we have changed since the start of the project and even since writing the record. We’ve found our comfort zone in this emotional limbo, where we can describe what we feel in order to resolve or understand it.”

Coming from different previous bands like Slander, Regarde, and La Fortuna, how much of the Jaguero identity is built on what you left behind versus what you actively decided to create together?

“Every previous project has given us, and continues to give us, the foundation for our expression. These projects defined us as people for a long time, and we carry with us a wealth of experience that forms the basis of this project. With this foundation, we start writing by blending our personal tastes and what we can physically achieve as musicians, without setting any stylistic limits or boundaries. Jaguero’s identity is a blend of all these things, individual experiences, and the desire for expression.”

Italian punk and alternative scenes have their own strong identity, but you’re also reaching audiences outside Italy now. Do you feel like you belong to a “local scene,” or is Jaguero already something more borderless?

“We feel part of what can be defined as the “scene” in general because, beyond just the hardcore/punk scene, we are often included in other contexts simply because our music is appreciated even by people who don’t usually listen to our style of music. Definitely, alongside the local scene, shows abroad (both watched and played) and the internet community have created a network where our songs are listened to and appreciated almost everywhere. The idea behind the Jaguero project has always been this: trying to spread this music as far as possible, whilst maintaining an identity tied to where we are from.”

There’s a rawness in your music that doesn’t feel polished in a traditional sense, it feels lived in. How important is imperfection in the way you write and record?

“Absolutely crucial. Often when we are recording, takes could come out with tiny mistakes or unrepeatable characteristics that we decide to keep, precisely to give that sense of purity and lack of over-production. We aren’t interested in writing off-the-shelf music: we want to write music that makes an impact when played live.”

If Make Me Feel Alive Again is a document of a search for vitality and meaning, where do you feel you are right now in that search: at the beginning, in the middle, or somewhere completely unexpected?

“When it comes to the concept of feeling alive, we can’t be at a point where we are fully aware of where we are, or where we are certain we’ve arrived. We are always in a completely unexpected place, because life can throw challenges at you from one moment to the next. It’s up to people to try and stop for a second to realise that this is exactly what feeling alive is all about.”

Make Me Feel Alive Again is available through streaming platforms and on vinyl via Anchors Aweigh Records.