Jessica Pratt

  

Jessica Pratt recently announced her third album Quiet Signs will be released on 8 February via City Slang. Along with the announcement she shared 'This Time Around', the album's warm, gently beautiful lead single which received widespread praise including a 'Best New Track' from Pitchfork. Today she steps into hazy, refracted sunlight on 'Poly Blue', the second single to be taken from the album. On the track the Los Angeles artist contemplates the mystery and thrill of love singing in her acrobatic falsetto. Lush flute, piano and synthesiser complete a landscape picture bursting with joyful, Free Design-esque colours.

 

Pratt also recently played a show at London's St Matthias Church which was described by The Line of Best Fit as "quietly confident and utterly transfixing", continuing that, "based on tonight’s set, Jessica Pratt looks set to make one of the earliest bids for album of 2019".

 

Quiet Signs is Pratt's first album fully recorded in a professional studio setting, her songs and guitar arrangements have been pared back to include only what is essential, while the home recorded haze of previous efforts parts to reveal the full scope of her vision. The album leads off with ‘Opening Night’, a nod to Gena Rowlands' harrowing, brilliant performance in the John Cassavetes film of the same name, as well as to where this spare, beautiful collection of songs falls within the course of the California artist's career. Songs like ‘Fare Thee Well’ and ‘Poly Blue’ retain glimmers of On Your Own Love Again's hazy day afternoon spells, yet delicate flute, string and organ arrangements and rehearsal room piano now gesture towards the lush chamber pop & longing of The Left Banke. On the first single, ‘This Time Around’, Pratt hits on a profound, late-night clarity over just a couple of deep chords, evoking Caetano Veloso's casual coastal brilliance. And before the curtain drops, Pratt provides a show-stopping closer, ‘Aeroplane’. Finally at home in a plane above the illuminated city, she sings with a newfound resolve. Quiet Signs is the journey of an artist stepping out of the darkened wings, growing comfortable as a solitary figure on a sprawling stage.

 

The album was written in Los Angeles and recorded at Gary's Electric in Brooklyn, NY over 2017/2018. It was co-produced by Al Carlson, who contributes flute, organ and piano. Matt McDermott also played piano and string synthesiser.

 

Pre-order Quiet Signs here: 

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