Tag: Julia Jacklin Don’t Let The Kids Win

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Julia Jacklin Shares Hazy and Earnest “Be Careful With Yourself”

With the release of 2016’s full-length debut, the folky Don’t Let The Kids Win, acclaimed Melbourne-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Julia Jacklin quickly carved out a reputation for being a direct lyricist, willing to excavate the parameters of intimacy and anger with songs that were simultaneously stark and raw, loose and playful. 2018’s sophomore album Crushing managed to draw the listener in even closer. 

Jacklin’s third album PRE PLEASURE is slated for a Friday release through Polyvinyl Record Co. Conceived upon returning home at the end of an extensive world tour to support Crushing, PRE PLEASURE‘s material was finished in a frantic few months of recording in Montreal with co-producer Marcus Paquin. “The songs on this record took either three years to write or three minutes,” Jacklin says. 

Jacklin teamed up with her Canadian touring band, which features The Weather Station’s Ben Whiteley (bass) and Will Kidman (guitar), Folly and the Hunter’s Laurie Torres (drums) and Adam Kinner (drums), as well as string arrangements by Owen Pallett recorded by a full orchestra in Prague. 

“Making a record to me has always just been about the experience, a new experience in a new place with a new person at the desk, taking the plunge and just seeing what happens” Jacklin says of traveling to Canada to work with a new producer for the third time in as many albums. “For the first time I stepped away from the guitar, and wrote a lot of the album on the Roland keyboard in my apartment in Montreal with its inbuilt band tracks. I blu-tacked reams of butcher paper to the walls, covered in lyrics and ideas, praying to the music gods that my brain would arrange everything in time.” 

The album reportedly sees Jacklin expanding upon her signature sound while thematically conjuring the ripples and fault lines caused by unreliable communication. 

In the lead-up to PRE PLEASURE‘s release, I’ve written about two of the album’s singles:

  • “I Was Neon,” a relentless motorik groove-driven track featuring buzzing guitars, Jacklin’s plaintive delivery and an enormous, arena rock friendly hook. And while being an anthemic bit of rock-leaning pop — or perhaps pop-leaning rock? — the song is rooted in earnest, lived-in lyricism that simultaneously expresses crippling self-doubt with a deeply, intelligent, almost winking self-awareness of how ridiculous it all is. 
  •  “Love, Try Not To Let Go” is a shimmering and swooning Fleetwood Mac-like track featuring Jacklin’s achingly tender delivery floating over twinkling keys, reverb-drenched guitars before exploding into thundering guitar chords during the song’s bridge. It’s a fittingly gorgeous yet brooding arrangement for a song that describes the confusing mix of hesitation and desire one feels towards love, heartbreak and moving forward. 

“Be Careful With Yourself,” PRE PLEASURE‘s is a hazy and dreamy slow-burner, centered around layers of jangling guitars, driving rhythms and ethereal harmonies paired with Jacklin’s effortless vocals and her unerring knack for anthemic hooks. At itNs core though, “Be Careful With Yourself” is an honest and vulnerable love song full of hope — hope for the longevity of the partner and the relationship in a way that captures the hopes of a fledging relationship.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Growing up in New South Wales’ Blue Mountains to a family of teachers and educations, Julia Jacklin originally thought she would follow a similar path as a social worker; however, the young Jacklin chanced upon a documentary about Britney Spears  while on a family vacation that changed the course of her life. As Jacklin mentions in press notes “By the time Britney was 12, she’d achieved a lot. I remember thinking ‘Shit what I have done with my life? I haven’t achieved anything.’ So I was like ‘Mum, as soon as we get home from this holiday, I need to get singing lessons.”

As the story goes, classical singing lessons were the only kind a young Jacklin could take in the area, but she took to it; however, by the time she was in her teens the lack of her own personal expression and she quickly joined a high school band, in which she spent time singing Avril Lavigne and Evanescence covers. And as you can imagine, she was quickly hooked — and recognized that music was something she should consider.

Recognizing you have to take a creative path and figuring out which path it should be often comes about in a series of epiphanies and serendipitous events. Jacklin’s second major epiphany came after she had finished high school. While traveling through South America, she ran into high school friend and future collaborator Liz Hughes. Bonding over a love of indie, Appalachian folk trio Mountain Man, the duo started a band together, initially with Jacklin singing the songs that Hughes wrote. “I would just sing,” Jacklin explained in press notes. “But as I got my confidence I started playing guitar and writing songs. I wouldn’t be doing music now if it wasn’t for Liz or that band. I never knew it was something I could do.”

Recorded in New Zealand’s Sitting Room Studios with Ben Edwards, best known for his work with Marlon Williams, Aldous Harding and Nadia Reid, Jacklin’s forthcoming full-length debut Don’t Let The Kids Win is indebted to the influence of Fiona Apple, Anna Calvi while drawing heavily from folk, alt-country and classic country as you’ll hear on the album’s first single “Leadlight,” a single I recently stumbled on while writing about another single. And if you can imagine it, I stopped what I was doing at my cluttered desk and was immediately moved by the ancient ache in this young singer/songwriter’s voice  — an ache of lost and squandered chances, terrible decisions, lost loves and longing that manages to be both a bittersweet lament that has its narrator seemingly saying “how did I fuck that all up — again?” and the wisp of a smile over the fact that life is often embittering, messy and enchanting. Such wisdom in someone so young — the singer/songwriter is only 25 — is a rarity and with a voice that hints at Patsy Cline and others, I think we’ll be hearing quite a bit from Jacklin.

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