By Berlinda Recacho
It's inevitable – make an album and somebody is going to ask about the title. The Pet Shop Boys cheekily named their first two releases as one-word responses, so that when fans went into a record shop, they could ask for "the new Pet Shop Boys album, Please", or say, "I'd like to buy the record by The Pet Shop Boys, Actually." Elvis Costello infamously considered the title Emotional Fascism for what would eventually be released as Armed Forces. Clearly trying to be too clever (or desperate) with Willful Obscurity and Dignity and a Plum, at the eleventh hour, R.E.M. settled for Out of Time because they were exactly that. Still, I wish reviewers and hosts would use more ingenuity and hazard a guess before leaning on the crutch of the dreaded question. I recently watched an online session of Julia Jacklin performing songs from her new album. Predictably, the first question she was asked at the break was "What is the definition of Pre-Pleasure?" She paused, fidgeted and demurely rustled up an answer, but rather than just rehash what she said, this is what it means to me in the context of listening to her lovely third record. There are friendships to assess, relationships to reckon with, and times of your life to hold on to or let go. The album's 10 songs seem to come from a liminal place, where before you can truly enjoy living, you have to take off your protective layers and check them in the vestibule of self-awareness.
In "Lydia Wears a Cross" religion and faith are observed through the wry eye of a schoolgirl going through the motions, praying for Princess Diana at a teacher's request one minute, listening to the soundtrack of Jesus Christ Superstar in the next, with the conviction that these are actions of similar weight. As a skeptic not interested in slander Jacklin intones, "I'd be a believer/If it was all just song and dance/I'd be a believer/if I thought we had a chance." The music is spare with an insistent electronic beat, but it has the frame of a hymn. The omniscient narrator of "Moviegoer" gently documents the passage of time through imagery of stills and scenes so vivid you can see them in front of you, while the chorus skewers the film industry's dependence on market over art. The hummable "I Was Neon" raises questions of identity and individuality from an internal point of view: "I was the open door/I was the sign that said/You've been here before/I was steady/I was soft to the touch/Cut wide open/Did I let in too much?" The chorus repeats the existential question "Am I gonna lose myself again?" like a mantra or litany, and responds modestly but affirmatively, "I quite like the person that I am." "Love, Try Not to Let Go" focuses on similar questions, this time from the perspective of an expatriate addressing herself, looking back: "The echo of my hometown/The things I never said/Consumes the space between me/And everyone I left."
The song that first grabbed my attention is the album closer, "End of A Friendship". We tend to think we'll be friends with the same people forever, then are shocked when our closest confidantes no longer feel connected to us. In some ways, the loss of a friend might be even more terrible than a romantic breakup. "She listed the things about me/she didn't like/I sat there in silence/accepted our fate/We always found it hard to relate/To what we both want and what we both need/And who we both want to be." You might expect the tune charting such a heavy realization to be something like a dirge, but instead, it floats and soars. When Jacklin sings, "All my love is spinning 'round the room/if only it would land on something soon", the words and music combine to create a third thing, the sound of bewilderment and loss and acceptance.
After multiple listenings it dawned on me that Jacklin's voice takes on the timbre of an instrument, in the way that jazz great Chet Baker's vocal phrasing mimics his trumpet. She becomes whatever the song needs. And like a poet, the impact of her deft and clever lyrics comes as much from her cadence, how she presses words together to make a rhyme work, or spaces the syllables out to emphasize a feeling. The quiet power of Pre-Pleasure lies in its balance of form, content, and delivery. At 32, Jacklin is already a storyteller wise beyond her years, in the tradition of singer-songwriters who know who they are at every age.
Pre-Pleasure by Julia Jacklin is out now via Polyvinyl Records.