Jelani Aryeh, courtesy Silken Weinberg.

Welcome to The Sweater Club by Jelani Aryeh. It’s a club the San Diego native created to heal the things that have been forgotten and un-nurtured, and an album made for the inner child.

“Each song has its own personality or outfit, it has its own face; it is a club made out of different people of different ages and personalities,” Aryeh said in a recent video call.

The 13-track sophomore album follows the Filipino African American artist’s 2021 debut, I’ve Got Some Living To Do, with streaming hits like “Stella Brown” and “MariGold” and “Trunk Song.” He said there are a lot more anthems coming for fans of his earlier material.

“This next album has the fullness and presence of those songs but emotionally, there is more of a spectrum than previous sounds,” he said. “There is a song for every kind of feeling, like driving by yourself on the coast or with your friends just doing whatever, or being curled up in your room, crying.”

The album falls under the alt-rock or alt-pop umbrellas, but Aryeh pulls from numerous genres including soul and electronic music of the ’80s and early 2000s. There are no features, but he worked with a new producer, Dan Hill, from the band The Now Now, for forthcoming song “Star Eyes.” He said the song sticks out from the rest of the album like a sore thumb, but that it’s a favorite.

On the just released title track, Aryeh reflects on moving up the beach from San Diego to L.A. There’s a sense of yearning and displacement in the lyrics for the artist, who said he had difficulties making new friends after leaving home.

“This song is about feeling disconnected from my body, taking a backseat and watching life happen to me,” he said. “Moving to L.A. changed the content of what I chose to focus on. It’s a bit heavier than previous sounds, it’s less naive and less optimistic. It is my version of being as real as I can to myself. The song allowed me to analyze the darker parts of my personality. It was me looking at myself and running away from a lot of things in my life. A lot of the album just feels like me trying to get my life back together and the idea of self.”

There’s a melancholy and nostalgia that visually translates in the video. It opens with Aryeh at 5 or 6 years old rolling in his Heelys. That’s cut into with snapshots of him walking alone in the city. There’s visual distortion and shakiness, giving it that home video energy. He said it reminds him where he’s from.

As with his older material, a lot of the new songs are internal conversations that feel like journal entries. Aryeh said these are the ones people latch onto and connect with the most.

“The ones that feel the most uncomfortable to listen to are the ones that should be out there,” he said, adding that that he’s able to reach these levels of honesty because of his time playing football as a kid.

“You got to turn on and forget, to not overthink and let go,” he said. “It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy, too. My name, ‘Jelani,’ means ‘mighty’ in Swahili.”

The music landscape is constantly changing, but creating is a life calling for the sonic shapeshifter.

“For me, it’s the most fulfilling thing for my spirit. It has to feel like I am having a face-to-face conversation with myself or with my best friend, and that is when it feels the most right to me. That’s how I stay grounded.”

Follow Dumisani Mnisi at Twitter.com/nairobi_1899 and Instagram.com/nairobi_1899.