Jessica Pratt
Here in Pitts
Mexican summer
02 May 2024
Web Exclusive
Jessica Pratt knows how to keep people waiting. Five years have passed since its release Quiet signs, a record that found her working in the studio for the first time and elevated her quietly enchanting songs to a new level of expertise and audience awareness. The gestation period for her new album, Here on the field, it was close to three years, half a lifetime for some artists. But Pratt's slow period of discovery has paid off richly. Here in Pitts it's another leap forward that sees her push into new realms to stunning effect.
Armed with the confidence of her studio experience quiet signs, Pratt sets out to capture a brighter palette here—”big, sweeping sounds that make you think of the ocean and California.” And while she cites none other than Pet sounds As her guide to this process, Pratt is as attuned to the sonic mystery of these recordings as she is to the obvious pleasures of the album—a quality she refers to as “atmospheric silence.” Indeed, the warm, organic echoes and baroque instrumentation heard on the stunning opener 'Life Is' or the gentle sweep of 'World on a String' recall not only The Beach Boys' iconic records but the otherworldly grandeur of his early solo work Scott Walker, past studio recording era looking locked in orange.
Capturing such an emotive mood requires a great deal of sabotage, but Pratt and her collaborators—multi-instrumentalist Al Carlson and keyboardist Matt McDermott (with bassist Spencer Zahn and percussionist Mauro Refosco)—pull off the trick masterfully with splashes of timpani. baritone sax and glockenspiel with such precision that it sounds like there are acres of space between the instruments. And while the album's title refers to both “degree darkness” and the sticky pitch black, there's a subtle arc of light that runs through the record, what Pratt calls a “strange optimism.” Here he found a new path, a space to create something that seems to exist beyond time. (www.jessicapratt.net)
Author Rating: 9/10
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