Jessica Pratt, Here in the Pitch Review

Jessica Pratt’s return from a significant hiatus, following her previous work, Quiet Signs, is a moment of anticipation and excitement. Her meticulous, almost painstaking approach to her craft is evident in Here in the Pitch, a culmination of her signature style and a bold venture into new, unexpected territories.

The album, which has been in gestation for nearly three years, showcases Pratt’s evolution from the intimate acoustics of Quiet Signs to a broader, more expansive sound. Drawing inspiration from the seminal The Beach Boys’ album, Pet Sounds, Pratt ambitiously captures a series of “big, panoramic sounds” that evoke the ocean’s vastness and the California landscape’s expansiveness. This is not a copy of The Beach Boys but a deep dive into the kind of baroque pop that Scott Walker perfected, marked by a lush yet eerie grandeur.

“Life Is,” the album’s stately opener, along with “World on a String,” magnificently illustrates this shift. These tracks blend organic echoes and precise instrumentals—timpani, percussion, strings, baritone saxophone, glockenspiel—with acres of perceived space between each note, creating an atmosphere that is at once vast and intimate. This effect is heightened by Pratt’s use of what she terms “atmospheric silence,” a technique that imbues the album with a haunting and beautiful mystique.

Central to the album’s charm is Pratt’s vocal delivery and lyrics, which have matured into a refined blend reminiscent of 1960s California. Her voice, supported by hypnotic reverb and delay, serves as the perfect conduit for the album’s thematic exploration of power, desolation, and the human condition. In tracks like “Empires Never Know,” Pratt delves into the disparities in perception and power dynamics, using her lyrics to challenge and reflect. Her choice to inhabit a character who wields power is particularly poignant, offering a fresh perspective on agency and control in a world that often feels beyond our grasp.

The production on Here in the Pitch strikes a delicate balance between enhancing the music’s accessibility and maintaining the ethereal quality of Pratt’s earlier work. The inclusion of moments of vocal counterpoint and playful percussion adds lightness to the album, counterbalancing the denser, more haunting aspects of her instrumentation. This juxtaposition of the thick and the sparse, the dark and the light, is what gives the album its unique texture and pull to explore further.

Here in the Pitch is an album about creating an atmosphere. While its runtime is brief, each track is crafted with enough intricacy and emotional depth to resonate long after the music stops. Pratt doesn’t rely on her past sounds; she redefines her sound, offering fresh perspectives that create a compelling freak-folk adventure. While some may find its subdued nature a bit monotonous, those attuned to its nuances will discover a rich, evocative album that is both challenging and rewarding. That’s the short of it!

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