The LA songwriter Jessica Pratt is back with a new album this May 3rd on City Slang called Here In The Pitch.
The artist’s first album since 2019’s Quiet Signs is preceded by the single ‘Life Is’ a song which channels a bit of Nico in its tone, and feels like a recording of that Velvet Underground era and in the artist’s words – “big panoramic sounds that make you think of the ocean and California” . Walker Brothers’ ‘The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore’ is also mentioned as a 60s pop influence.
The album features nine songs, with timpani, glockenspiel, baritone saxophone, and flute alongside Pratt’s singular voice, though Pratt says the song and album opener ‘Life Is’ is “kind of a false flag”, as the rest of the album features the artist’s trademark smaller intimate folk songwriting style.
“Life came and went and you didn’t land where you thought you would”, Pratt says of the song. “It’s the third act and you’re trying to climb back on the horse before it gets dark”.
The video, co-directed by Colby Droscher and Pratt, was shot around New York City in late 2023 and references Kenneth Anger and Stan Brakhage as inspiration.
It was recorded at Gary’s Electric Studio in Brooklyn with her trusted collaborators – multi-instrumentalist/engineer Al Carlson and keyboardist Matt McDermott – Pratt enlisted the rhythm duo of bassist Spencer Zahn and percussionist Mauro Refosco (David Byrne, Atoms for Peace) to help realise her vision, alongside contributions from Ryley Walker, Peter Mudge (Mac Miller, Kendrick Lamar), and Alex Goldberg.
I loved the self-titled album from 2012 a lot.
Jessica Pratt – Here in the Pitch album tracklist:
1. Life Is
2. Better Hate
3. World on a String
4. Get Your Head Out
5. By Hook or by Crook
6. Nowhere It Was
7. Empires Never Know
8. Glances
9. The Last Year
pre-order here
Jessica Pratt tour dates:
31 May – Barcelona, ES @ Primavera Sound
2 June – Paris, FR @ L’Alhambra ^
3 June – Brussels, BE @ AB Theater ^
4 June – Amsterdam, NL @ Zonnehuis ^
6 June – London, UK @ Union Chapel ^
20 June – Los Angeles, CA @ Teragram Ballroom
21 June – Pioneertown, CA @ Pappy & Harriet’s
22 June – San Francisco, CA @ Bimbo’s 365 Club
26 June – Seattle, WA @ Neumos
27 June – Portland, OR @ Wonder Ballroom
24 July – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom
26 July – Philadelphia, PA @ World Cafe Live
27 July – Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair
^ = support from Joanna Sternberg
More: Jessica Pratt returns with new album Here In The Pitch
“I became obsessed with figures emblematic of the dark side of the Californian dream while making this record”, Pratt explains, noting the influence of Los Angeles’ strange, seedy history and the bleak end of the hippy era. You can hear this playfully villainous perspective emerging in her imagistic lyrics, although the clearest shift is in her vocal performance. While Pratt admits to always seeking inspiration from voices that sound like they’ve been “drug through life”, she worked on these songs to develop a fuller, more physical style that draws from the dignified baritone of Scott Walker and the weathered theatrics of latter-day Judy Garland.
If a sense of hope is clear in Pratt’s words, it’s even clearer in her performance: placing her voice at the forefront and creating an emotional immediacy that sets this record apart from all her past work. “I never wanted it to take this long. I’m just a real perfectionist”, she explains of the album’s long gestation, which spanned from summer 2020 to the spring of 2023. “I was just trying to get the right feeling, and it takes a long time to do that”. With Here In The Pitch, Pratt comes as close as she ever has to this feeling of perfection, to music you can reach out and touch in the air around you, to summoning with every note the hope and mystery, the horror and romance, that lingers within the silence. Through these songs, she suggests those qualities are precisely what keeps us listening, over and over again, on the edge of our seats.
