Jessica Pratt covers the third issue of the BrooklynVegan digital magazine. Read the entire issue (at no cost) here.
What is it about the 1960s that remains so endlessly alluring? On top of being one of the most creative periods of the last century for popular music and art in general, it’s remained a constant source of inspiration to so many artists who came in its wake. The decade’s hippie movement came to an abrupt end just as the ’60s itself did, as the summer of love made way for Manson and Altamont, and the music of the early ’70s reflected how instantly the cultural switch was flipped–it’s almost as if you can hear the acid wearing off just by listening to the first wave of post-Woodstock records. But as new generations of musicians discovered the music and the culture of that period, they began crafting their own wondrous worlds created in the image of albums like Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper’s. Those albums remain the gold standard by which adventurous pop music is judged, and they and others from that time period have inspired so many musical masterpieces that have come out since.
“I think it was a rare moment in human history of where there was a large number of people that were feeling radicalized and liberated by these sorts of ideas of unconditional love and acceptance and self exploration… and I think it was like a direct reaction to the preceding era, which was all about repression and having to conform to whatever societal demands,” says Jessica Pratt, who calls Pet Sounds “my favorite record of all time, maybe a close contender with a couple of others.” She also adds, “I would say that there are probably a lot of people that feel that people aren’t necessarily making music on that level as often anymore, and I don’t really know how to account for that. It’s one of life’s great mysteries.”
Jessica has been mining the ’60s for influence ever since the making of her self-titled debut album, released in 2012 on White Fence leader Tim Presley’s label Birth Records but recorded to analog tape five years earlier. The album gradually found its audience and gained comparisons to hidden-gem albums by cultishly-loved ’60s/’70s-era folk singers like Sibylle Baier, Vashti Bunyan, Linda Perhacs, and Karen Dalton. When I asked her what musicians of that ilk speak to her the most, the first one that came to mind was Jonathan Halper, who soundtracked the 1949 short film Puce Moment with the songs “Leaving My Old Life Behind” and “I Am A Hermit” before disappearing into obscurity. “His vocal is sort of Jagger-esque in sort of the mid ’60s sort of way, but the melodies are haunting and there’s just sort of an air of something on the recording,” Jessica says. “It’s spooky but it’s also beautiful. It’s something that I return to many times.”
It didn’t take Jessica Pratt’s own music long to be spoken about with that same reverence, like something lost to time that sounded hidden from the world. Jessica ended up signing to Drag City–a label that had built up a reputation for reissuing those types of cult records and also working with newer artists in that realm–and she released her sophomore album On Your Own Love Again on the label in 2015. The bigger label and heightened exposure seemingly did nothing to affect Jessica’s actual music; self-recorded with a four-track and featuring nothing but Jessica’s voice, acoustic guitar, and some minor clavinet and organ embellishments, On Your Own Love Again is just as raw, intimate, and hushed as Jessica’s debut, and it’s still one of the most breathtaking albums of its kind to be released in the 21st century.
2019’s Quiet Signs saw Jessica moving from Drag City to likeminded label Mexican Summer, and working in a proper studio with a proper producer, Al Carlson, whose knack for achieving the sounds Jessica hears in her head she describes as “a bit like working with a magician.” The album ever so slightly fleshed out her music with auxiliary instrumentation, but still remained largely within the same realm as her first two records. It wasn’t until this year’s Here in the Pitch that her music began to reflect her love of Pet Sounds and Scott Walker and other orchestral pop records; it’s still rooted firmly in the sound, aura, and mindset of the 1960s, and it’s still a deeply quiet record, but it’s a much grander work than its predecessors, something that no longer sounds like an individual artist in a room by themselves.
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