Julia Jacklin: Crushing (Liberation)

 |   |  1 min read

Don't Know How to Keep Loving You
Julia Jacklin: Crushing (Liberation)

Might as well just say this straight away: the list for “best of the year” albums starts with this remarkable, mature second album by Australia's Julia Jacklin who here peels away emotional layers, takes a look through the prism at her recent life and refracts the views back through clever and often understated songs.

Since her impressive and unexpectedly successful debut album Don't Let the Kids Win of two years ago (recorded in New Zealand), Jacklin has enjoyed and endured the touring life where on the road discomforts, men overly keen to have physical if not intimate contact (the dark pop of Head Alone which builds itself into a righteous fury of rage and guitars), a relationship breakdown (the broody opener Body), well-meaning friends wanting to drag her out of the necessary reflection to simply dance the heartache away (Pressure to Party which looks back to Fifties pop from an indie.rock musical perspective) . . . 

That's a lot of personal (but also universal) information, and those are just the first three of the 10 originals here.

There is some exceptional and rare insight here: Pressure to Party runs counter to all those songs about “good, you're gone”; Don't Know How t Keep Loving You is a dreamily sad and thoughtful reflection on trying to keep the flame alive as the relationship matures (and how she feels the pressure on her to do so, as many girls and women do), and it comes with a leisurely Neil Young-like guitar solo: “What if I cleaned up, what if I worked on my skin . . .”

The final track, the lowkey acoustic Comfort, weighs up feelings after a relationship has faded and offers a weary optimism that this too shall pass but also respects the pain that people feel even if it is them who ended things: “He'll be just fine, hurt for a while, cure it with time . . . you can't be the one to hold him when you were the one who left . . .”

Elsewhere she weighs up the funeral of a friend on the piano ballad When the Family Flies In: “You know it's bad when the family flies in, working bees back to the hive . . .”

These are sophisticated thoughts realised in refined lyrics and married to music – from tight guitar textures (the rocking You Were Right) to front-parlour acoustic solitude – which matches the prismatic moods.

A quite remarkable album under a neatly ambiguous title.

Julia Jacklin's Crushing is released on Friday February 22

TOUR DATES 

Wed 27 Feb – Blue Smoke, CHCH

Thu 28 Feb – The Cook, Dunedin

Fri 1 Mar – Hollywood Avondale , Auckland

Sat 2  Mar– San Fran, Wellington

Share It

Your Comments

Patrick Smith - Feb 25, 2019

Another fine musical find for me judging by featured track. Thanks Graham.

Antonia Craig - Feb 26, 2019

What a lovely smooth track, great voice with understated power. Thanks for this gift of this new artist.

post a comment

More from this section   Music at Elsewhere articles index

Giant Sand: Recounting the Ballads of The Thin Line Men (Fire/Southbound)

Giant Sand: Recounting the Ballads of The Thin Line Men (Fire/Southbound)

Many artists talk about how they'd like to revisit and re-record parts of their catalogue, but few have done it as assiduously as Howe Gelb, the mainman of Giant Sand. In the past decade he has... > Read more

Flying Lotus: Flamagra Instrumentals (Warp/Border/digital outlets)

Flying Lotus: Flamagra Instrumentals (Warp/Border/digital outlets)

Now this is very interesting, the somewhat uneven Flamagra album by Flying Lotus released in the middle of last year now reappears in a Deluxe edition with an extra iteration where many of the... > Read more

Elsewhere at Elsewhere

TONY PARSONS INTERVIEWED (2004): About a Man in the Family Way

TONY PARSONS INTERVIEWED (2004): About a Man in the Family Way

British author Tony Parsons used to take drugs with Johnny Rotten but now prefers taking his two-year old to the park and writing about families in the suburbs. He now lives the life of a... > Read more

Mahi's West Coast Venison Hot Pot

Mahi's West Coast Venison Hot Pot

This recipe was provided by Jayson Hussey, aka Mahi which means "work" because he was always working. He was the chef at the luxurious Franz Joseph Glacier Country Retreat near the Franz... > Read more