Jessica Pratt is releasing a new album, “Here in the Pitch”, on May 3rd via Mexican Summer. Pratt has shared the album’s second single, “World on a String,” via a music video. Fellow musician Kate Bollinger directed the song’s video. A number of previously unexplored influences infiltrate Jessica Pratt’s folk song writing, including wall-of-sound 60s pop, bossa nova, and psychedelia.
On her first full-length since 2019, Pratt takes the reverb-drenched sounds of 1960s recordings and twists and fine-tunes them into new shapes. The minimalist majesty and spaciousness of previous releases remain, but there’s a noirish lens at play in both the songwriting and production, as if the they were decades-old tracks plucked from a cellar in the hills of the U.S. West Coast.
A lush, dreamy collection that we reckon is easily her finest work to date.
“On this track I was influenced by the swaying, naive brilliance of ‘lost’ teenage garage rock bands, as well as enduring loves like The Nazz and Guided By Voices,” Pratt says in a press release. “Record the song moments after you’ve learned it on an instrument you’ve just picked up. Oftentimes, that’s all you need.”
Bollinger had this to say about the video: “Making this video with Jessica was a dream art project. We emailed for days, eventually landing on a mondo style march-of-the-pagan village meets field of freaks. We brought in many friends from Los Angeles: two DPs, 20 cast members, and a production designer. It was a big group effort and a day I’ll always remember.”
Previously Pratt shared the album’s first single, “Life Is,” .
“Here in the Pitch” is the follow-up to 2019’s “Quiet Signs”. The Los Angeles-based musician once again recorded at Gary’s Electric Studio in Brooklyn. She worked with previous collaborators, multi-instrumentalist/engineer Al Carlson and keyboardist Matt McDermott. Bassist Spencer Zahn and percussionist Mauro Refosco (David Byrne, Atoms for Peace) also took part in the sessions. Ryley Walker, Peter Mudge (Mac Miller, J.I.D.), and Alex Goldberg all also contributed to the album.
“I became obsessed with figures emblematic of the dark side of the Californian dream while making this record,” Pratt said of “Here in the Pitch” in a previous press release.
Pratt recorded the album over a three-year period, from 2020 to 2023. Of the five-year gap between albums, she said: “I never wanted it to take this long. I’m just a real perfectionist. I was just trying to get the right feeling, and it takes a long time to do that.”
The previous press release compared the album’s first single, and opening track, “Life Is,” to The Walker Brothers’ 1960s orchestral pop classic “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore,” but Pratt warned it’s not exactly representative of the album as a whole, which is starker.
“In a way, it’s kind of a false flag,” Pratt admitted. “But I also feel like it’s a statement of intention.”
the album “Here in the Pitch”, out May 3rd, 2024 on Mexican Summer/City Slang
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