Album of the Week: Julia Jacklin - PRE PLEASURE

Julia Jacklin’s third album, PRE PLEASURE, takes all the deep, tender lyrical content and masterful musicianship and dials it up to 11. Sounding both nostalgic and instantly emotionally effective, Jacklin showcases her lyrical wizardry, managing to be intimately relatable as she grapples with a myriad of themes from the human experience including parental and romantic relationships, religion, porn, and kind of a little bit of everything in between those extremes.

Recorded in Montreal, Jacklin teamed up with co-producer Marcus Paquin (The Weather Station, The National) to engineer PRE PLEASURE alongside her Canadian touring band also featuring members of The Weather Station. The result is a deep and diverse record of catchy tunes and profound words, ranging from the stripped back organ and guitar led ballads like Too In Love To Die and Less Of A Stranger, to the driving, distorted indie rock of I Was Neon or the jangly Love, Try Not To Let Go.

Album opener and single Lydia Wears A Cross perhaps best sums up the record in one track - kicking off as a minimalist composition of just piano and drum machine, the track gives way to a fleshed out arrangement (with “real” drums!) about halfway through, signalling the sonic journey that’s to come without fully showing the album’s hand.

With PRE PLEASURE, Jacklin cements herself as not just one of Australia’s most talented modern musical exports, but also as one of the most consistently amazing indie artists on the planet.

The best of the rest of this week's records:

Declaime & Madlib - In The Beginning Vol. 2 [Someothaship Connect] USA

Hip Hop

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith - Let's Turn It Into Sound [Ghostly Inernational] USA

Electronic

Meechy Darko - Gothic Luxury [Loma Vista Recordings] USA

Hip Hop

Nelson Dialect - C.G. Jung [Vinyl Digital] AUS

Hip Hop

Pantha Du Prince - Garden Gaia [BMG] GER

Electronic

Rachika Nayar - Heaven Come Crashing [NNA Tapes] USA

Electronic

Roc Marciano & The Alchemist - The Elephant Man's Bones [ALC] USA

Hip Hop

Stella Donnelly - Flood [Independent] AUS

Indie / Pop

Thee Sacred Souls - Thee Sacred Souls [Daptone Records] USA

Soul