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A guitar is only about eight pounds, but it can feel much heavier when you bear that weight on a shoulder prone to dislocation. Likewise, it\u2019s not easy to play it with swollen and dislocated finger joints. But since she took up playing professionally, Natasha Jacobs \u2013 the force behind Brooklyn-based band Thelma \u2013 has had to deal with a constant pain that threatened her career. The band released its debut<\/a> in 2017 while Jacobs studied composition at SUNY Purchase, and while demoing a second record, she began investigating her health issues in earnest. In the course of that journey, Jacobs was diagnosed with unrelated thyroid cancer, which jeopardized her singing voice, and it wasn\u2019t until that was under control that she finally had an explanation for her pain \u2013 Ehlers Danlos Syndrome<\/a>, a genetic disorder that, for her, manifests itself as loose joints and faulty connective tissues. But none of this kept Jacobs from completing her sophomore record, not only because she\u2019s an extremely resilient person, but because, as she would attest to in the very title of the LP, out today, that making music wasn\u2019t just a passing hobby or cold ambition. For her, it was The Only Thing<\/em> she could imagine doing.<\/p>\n \u201cApart from music, it just really changed my perspective on life and what I want,\u201d Jacobs says. \u201cBefore, I was so focused on making it as an artist, which, we all want that. But I think it really made me value love and friendship in a different way and what I want my life to be like. And also, [I started] really thinking about how you don\u2019t have to be a successful<\/em> artist to be an artist.\u201d With The Only Thing<\/em>, Jacobs has learned to be truer to her art: pursuing the pop-oriented sounds that brought her joy as a child; embracing synthesizers because they\u2019re easier for her to \u201cmake an aggressive sound with so little effort;\u201d and leaning in to the idiosyncrasies of her voice, which she says friends have described as that of a \u201cprimordial baby.\u201d<\/p>\n