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Please enter the Jessica Pratt thread

Started by Crabwalk, February 15, 2019, 04:17:41 PM

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Crabwalk



Jessica Pratt has just released her third magical album, so here's a thread where, potentially, up to four people can celebrate her.

Boiling her music down to its core ingredients is in no way indicative of her beguiling singularity. On the face of it she's a San Francisco based singer-songwriter trading in predominantly solo acoustic country-folk. See, that sounds boring and derivative and she is neither of those things. She stands apart from anything else of that type that I've heard this century.

There are echoes of distinctively-voiced artists of the past such as Vashti Bunyan, Linda Perhacs and Sibylle Baier but she has a unique, otherworldly quality that grabs you from the off.

There is nothing academic or show-offy about her music. It exists in a realm beyond our hectic own, one that you can tune into for the duration of her records - ideally via headphones so you can best experience their encompassing, gorgeous intimacy.

A poorly-written whistle-stop guide to her albums so far:


Jessica Pratt (2012)

These were songs she recorded at home on tape in 2007, with no real intention of doing anything with them. They got into the hands of Tim Presley from White Fence, who set up a label just so he could release them to the world. This is her most conventional sounding record, full of country-tinged, finger-picked folk (these genre terms do not really apply to her but they'll have to do as shorthand here), but her voice and songwriting are incredible from the off. She was somehow only 20 years old at the point of recording.
Midnight Wheels
Bushel Hyde
Half Twain the Jesse



On Your Own Love Again (2015)

I named this my album of the year on CaB, possibly the highest accolade she's ever achieved and no doubt she's very proud. Some of the innocence of the debut is exchanged for a certain weird darkness, which only adds to the beauty of her work. She multitracks her reverb-heavy vocals, adding coos and croaks, amps up the tape hiss (this is home recorded again), and even adds a hint of percussion here and there. But these are subtle developments that develop her sonic realm rather that reinvent it. The songs themselves are, in the lowest-key way possible, astonishing.
Strange Melody
Back, Baby
Greycedes



Quiet Signs (2019)

Recorded in a studio this time, this is if anything an even more subtle and gorgeous record than its predecessors. The soundscapes are expanded with piano, flute and synths delicately woven in. She's also developing her phrasing and range as a singer, with a touch of torch song and bossa nova scattered around to suit the hints of jazz in some of the arrangements. I'll be amazed if there's a better record released this year. /HyperboleMode
Here, My Love
Poly Blue
Aeroplane


So, what do you think of Jessica Pratt? Think her voice is like nails down a blackboard? Capable of dragging the concept of the 21st Century singer-songwriter out of the John Lewis cuntbin?

HAVE YOUR SAY.


Ferris

Posting so I remember to listen to her on Spotify when I get home. Great plug^

selectivememory

On Your Own Love Again is a superb album, one of my favourites from the last decade or so. Haven't given the new one a proper listen yet, although I heard "This Time Around" the other day, and that is gorgeous.

jamiefairlie

Love all her stuff up to now and I have the new one but it's only slowly rising up my backlog so I can't comment but expect great things.

alan nagsworth

Great post, Crabman.

She really is remarkably talented. I can't deny that part of the charm of her wondrous sound lies in the fact that she may well have been content to never have it see the light of day, were it not for Presley's insistence. I remember the first time I heard "Back, Baby" and I must have played it about five or six times in a row right there and then. Just utterly captivating. Her sense of melody combined with her ethereal voice is really quite singular. She's a treasure.

I'm only just getting around to listening to this new stuff, and I'd little doubt that it would be great. It is. She's playing a few gigs at the end of March and I urge anyone curious to go and see her. I saw her last year playing in a church and it was bloody magical.

Crabwalk

Quote from: alan nagsworth on February 16, 2019, 06:14:01 PM
I'm only just getting around to listening to this new stuff, and I'd little doubt that it would be great. It is. She's playing a few gigs at the end of March and I urge anyone curious to go and see her. I saw her last year playing in a church and it was bloody magical.

What was the crowd like? I can imagine getting incenced by chatters, given how quiet and delicate a solo performance must be?

I've still not managed to see her live and I can't get to the Hackney show next month, unfortunately. It doesn't look like I'll be at End of the Road this year either, which I initially thought was going to be my best chance. Hopefully she'll play some UK shows around then that I'll be able to get to.

alan nagsworth

Quote from: Crabwalk on February 17, 2019, 10:00:26 AM
What was the crowd like? I can imagine getting incenced by chatters, given how quiet and delicate a solo performance must be?

They were actually extremely respectful, some of the quietest I've experienced in my immediate memory of such hushed performances. I think we'd both be safe in assuming that her otherworldly aural presence quite possibly commanded an awed silence. Amusingly the only disturbances were the intermittent cracking of cans - a poor decision of the makeshift bar which, instead of maddening me, was something I found really funny every time it happened - and the one point at which my tickly cough overpowered me and I spluttered out a brief but very loud HACK. Soz Jess.

Similarly, on a slight derail, I went to a classical piano recital in St James Piccadilly Church last week - yeah that's right, I'm cultured, eat my asshole - and some fucking cunt behind us was whispering during the plinky plonks. Like, mate, of all the gigs you don't talk at, it's the one where a single instrument is being played, with no microphone, with perfunctory nuance on every goddamned note. It doesn't mater how inaudible you think you're being or how old and deaf half the soon-to-be-next-to-meet-their-maker-in-a-casket-in-the-very-same-building punters are. You could hear a fucking flea blink in here. Fucking shut up.

Crabwalk

Very vivid accounts, thanks Nags.

As a reward, here is Jessica buying some records and talking thoughtfully about them:

https://youtu.be/du9Mnfg-wcM


thraxx


Thanks for the plug, yes this really quite special. Blown away by how good this is, raw and honest, wears its influences on its sleeve but totally occupies its own space. How on earth have I only just heard about her?

Crabwalk

This album has garnered a bit more coverage than the previous two, but i suspect she'll always be happier staying off the radar. She's unlikely to ever have any sort of 'breakthrough radio hit', but word of her special talent will inevitably spread, record by record. If only by her being namechecked by more popular artists.

Crabwalk

Just a bump to share this beautiful video of Jessica performing 'Poly Blue' outside the national museum of modern art in Paris. She's accompanied by a tiny Casio keyboard, a flautist and some skateboarders.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-GzmFm8XKI