Every radiant verse of Jessica Pratt‘s new record Here in the Pitch reveals itself as a revelatory flashpoint of doleful but rejuvenating hope. Her words float in on warmly woven melodies that overwhelm and uplift you with their beguiling refulgence — illuminating all the festering fears and carefully guarded longings that echo within the chambers of the soul.
This collection insists on being experienced via the intimacies of a live show, and you’ll have the chance to do just that when Pratt rolls into town on her upcoming U.S. tour. Catch her with a full band at the Teragram Ballroom in Los Angeles on June 20th and at Pappy + Harriet’s in Pioneertown on June 21st.
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A Collection of Sonorous and Gloaming Balladry
You won’t make it two songs into this bittersweetly quick 27-minute record without finding yourself enchanted by its melodic luminescence — the brightly burning center of which is Pratt’s voice. Glimmering as the sole phosphorescence in a room devoid of light, it delicately entwines its beaming strands across the cavernous atmospherics of every song.
Throughout Here in the Pitch, her swooning coos and tumbling la-la-la’s are gently lifted and smothered by a paced cascade of heavy percussing raps and richly reverberating strings. Causing them to smolder with both a somber dreaminess and a dually haunting resonance.
“I want to be the sunlight of the century / I want to be a vestige of our senses free,” she shares in earnest on “World on a String,” painting her lofty hopes with lambent intensity. Yet each of the gauzy lullabies found within manages to do just that, encircling you in its dismal doom even as it lifts you weightlessly toward a budding rebirth.
A Noble Wandering of the Liminal Spaces between Nostalgia and Dread
Surrendering to Pratt’s serenades is like stepping over the threshold of a different age through the red door of a Sunset Strip club into the velvety and intoxicating nostalgia. Her spellbinding incarnation of 60s folk simultaneously invites and forewarns listeners against becoming too eagerly enamored with the past.
The darker avenues explored inside Here in the Pitch are contextualized by her fascination with everything from the unsavory side of 20th-century Los Angeles to the rusting of the California dream and the disillusionment that fizzled at the close of the hippy movement. It’s against this backdrop of mournful disenchantment and zeitgeist-crumbling revelations that she stages some of the record’s more devastating epiphanies.
“Our crimes are just a rhythm on the west,” she elucidates on “By Hook Or By Crook,” before ruminating on the staling fantasy of a time that still retains its hooks in us: “Some evil innocence, wild century can’t express / A gesture left in summer’s mind / Autumn’s come to find / And it’s the end of the dreams again.”
As the album reaches its close, she shares more despondent musings that wrangle with the delusion of ending empires and the unreachable past.
SHOW PICKS OF THE MONTH!
Poetics that Pierce the Heart and Kindle the Soul
For all its brooding aura, Hear in the Pitch reaffirms the poetic potency of Pratt’s songwriting, her lyrics delving into vulnerable turmoils and the struggle to kindle faith in the future, let alone yourself. What inevitably shines through and stays with you with every listen are the moments when her cautious hope burns through the gloom.
“Cause I can feel my luck has turned it all around / And when you’ve fallen out, get both feet on the ground / The curses you keep won’t follow you now,” come those glowing trills at the start of the album, wrestling with self-doubt, a terror of false starts, and the incessantly humbling cycle of time.
Pratt’s words emerge as a faint but earnest guiding light — “Get your head out, start your way up / Cut along a seam of life / There’s just no time to say how / Our spirit’s high” — urging you to keep stumbling forward. She bookends the album with that tender perseverance, choosing to end it on a resounding note of gladness: “I think it’s gonna be fine / I think we’re gonna be together / And the storyline goes forever / And the distances I can see / It’s you and me.” It’s this mild optimism that persists throughout, embers of alluring faith that keep the hearth of your soul ever alight.
See Jessica Pratt at Teragram Ballroom in Los Angeles on Thursday, June 20th, and at Pappy + Harriet’s in Pioneertown on Friday, June 21st.
Words: Steven Ward
Visit Jessica Pratt on her Bandcamp and Instagram to stay updated on new releases and tour announcements.
Jessica Pratt Tour
Fri. May 31 – Barcelona, ES @ Primavera Sound
Sun. June 2 – Paris, FR @ L’Alhambra *
Mon. June 3 – Brussels, BE @ AB Theater *
Tue. June 4 – Amsterdam, NL @ Zonnehuis *
Thu. June 6 – London, UK @ Union Chapel *
Fri. June 7 – London, UK @ Earth Theatre ~
Tue. June 18 – San Diego, CA @ Lou Lou’s %
Thu. June 20 – Los Angeles, CA @ Teragram Ballroom %
Fri. June 21 – Pioneertown, CA @ Pappy + Harriet’s %
Sat. June 22 – San Francisco, CA @ Bimbo’s 365 Club %
Tue. June 25 – Vancouver, BC @ Biltmore Cabaret %
Wed. June 26 – Seattle, WA @ Neumos %
Thu. June 27 – Portland, OR @ Wonder Ballroom %
Sat. June 29 – Sonoma, CA @ Gundlach Bundschu %
Thu. July 18 – Minneapolis, MN @ Fine Line ^
Fri. July 19 – Madison, WI @ Majestic Theatre ^
Sun. July 21 – Chicago, IL @ Pitchfork Music Festival
Mon. July 22 – Cleveland, OH @ The Roxy ^
Wed. July 24 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom ^
Thu. July 25 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom #
Fri. July 26 – Philadelphia, PA @ World Cafe Live #
Sat. July 27 – Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair #
Mon. July 29 – Washington, DC @ The Howard Theatre #
Tue. July 30 – Saxapahaw, NC @ Haw River Ballroom #
Fri. Aug. 2 – Nashville, TN @ Basement East #
Sat. Aug. 3 – Atlanta, GA @ Terminal West #
Sat. Sept. 21 – Sun. Sept. 22 – Accord, NY @ Woodsist Festival
* Joanna Sternberg
~ Joanne Robertson
% Tony Molina
^ June McDoom
# @
