To listen to Jessica Pratt’s spectral folk music is to be disoriented by time. Her songs have always been like a back-alley portal to a lost decade or a vestige of childhood consciousness; you could fall asleep streaming them on Spotify and wake up believing they’re coming from a great-ancestor’s dust-covered phonograph. You might have heard her old-world croon on Troye Sivan’s last album, a snippet of her 2015 ditty “Back, Baby” nestled in his heartbreak ballad “Can’t Go Back, Baby” as a memory of a memory, a distant point of no return.
On her bewitching upcoming album, Here in the Pitch, eras once again cloud and converge. Pratt started drafting it immediately after her last record, 2019’s Quiet Signs, letting wisps of ideas coalesce over a long period in which she watched classic films, studied seedy California history, and dwelled on the dark side of paradise. Over gentle bossa nova grooves and dappled orchestral touches, she conjures bittersweet vignettes of wilted honor, unrealized potential, and, of course, the spellbinding logic of time. The spirit of Los Angeles’ icons and anti-heroes, living and the dead, diffuse into the record’s enchanted atmosphere of sunlight and smoke.
Some of the songs on Here in the Pitch yearn for this epic, era-defining glory. You sing, for example, “I want to be the sunlight of the century” or “The chances of a lifetime might be hiding their tricks up my sleeve / Used to be the greatest now I see.” What were you thinking about when writing?
Sometimes people come to songwriting from a very conceptual standpoint. I’m very much the opposite, where it’s just sort of blindly feeling around in the dark. It’s like a riddle I’m trying to solve the entire time I’m writing, or waking up from a dream and knowing that there was something important that took place but it’s, like, just evading your grasp.
As is the case for a lot of people that write fiction or songs or screenplays, it’s always a little bit of you and a little bit of a character. There’s almost a manic quality to the first quarter of the record, where someone is entitled and embittered and megalomaniacal. It’s this weird ego moment that was happening, and it freaked me out. I was joking that the theme is “the villain’s lament.”
What was this ego moment? You were feeling really self-centered, and that made you nervous?
Not from me, subconsciously. You’re reading books, you’re watching movies. Sometimes characters just bubble out the stuff that’s swimming around in your head, for instance, watching No Country for Old Men. I’m trying to find the vessel for the emotional root. Maybe there’s some sort of unbridled frustration related to something else that is being expressed via these characters.
What other media were you consuming at the time?
I was reading a lot of books about L.A.’s history. I read a few about the Manson family, like Helter Skelter and then Chaos, which is like a rebuttal to Helter Skelter. It’s amazing. It started out as this guy, Tom O’Neill, being assigned a story about the 30th anniversary of the Manson murders for a magazine and then totally getting sucked into it. The level of research is pretty crazy.
I’ve always been very interested in Kenneth Anger, and how all of these figures sort of intersected at that time. California is very unique, and it feels younger than the rest of the country. Oh, another book I forgot to mention is City of Quartz by Mike Davis. And Set the Night on Fire. It’s about rioting, political uprisings in Southern California.
What is intriguing to you about Los Angeles history and mythology?
It’s this conflict of light and dark — there’s Hollywood glamour and sunshine and citrus contrasted with a lot of dark history, and I always feel the presence of those two things. This was true when I lived in San Francisco, too. It always feels like there’s this unseen, psychic energy. It all comes back to things that I can’t name or identify.
Now that you’ve made your way through the riddle of your own work, what are you seeing? Is there anything you’re surprised by?
Yes and no. There’s a creeping quality to the record. And by creeping, I mean creepy in general, but also if you imagine shadows creeping along the wall, as the sun is shifting through the sky. I was actually talking to a friend the other day, and he was saying, your music always feels like there’s something sinister in the room with you, but it isn’t necessarily fully materializing. That encapsulates a lot of what the record is about: fear and other negative emotions in this strange, abstract way.
What music were you listening to while making the record?
There are perennial things that I return to, like Burt Bacharach. I was also listening to mid-to-late Beach Boys, particularly Friends. There are some songs where there are jazz chords overlapping with bossa nova. As for the percussion, a lot of that was coming from the classic Pet Sounds studio sounds where you’re trying to tap into this atmospheric field and hear the room.
What does “It” girl mean to you?
I feel like an “It” girl has to feel like someone who’s wise beyond their years. Who conveys intelligence, glamour, and maybe, on occasion, a bit of world weariness, sort of in this implicit way. She’s often seen, not always heard — it’s like a visual thing a lot of the time. In some manner or another, I’ve been fascinated with various “It” girls over the years in the way that they often evoke both a tragic romance and resilience.
Who are some of the “It” girls you’ve been fascinated by?
My mind goes to some of the classics first, like Edie Sedgwick and Candy Darling. I remember wanting to emulate the softness and glamour of her makeup and presence. And she was really coyly funny as well, and then being mythologized in the Velvet Underground song only adds to it. Holly Woodlawn too, in the first lines of “Walk on the Wild Side.” I used to have a DVD of Trash, and I’d watch it all the time on my family’s computer when I was like 15 or 16. And she was so funny. I loved the big hair and the 1930s pencil eyebrows.
And Nico. I heard The Marble Index probably around the same age. It completely blew my mind.
Who do you see as the “It” girls of today?
Natalie Wynn — the ContraPoints video essayist. Hilarious, somewhat troubled genius who is making a very meaningful impact culturally. I look forward to every video like it’s Christmas morning. The most recent one on Twilight is really amazing.
How did you come up with your signature under-eye eyeliner look?
I wish I knew the true origin. I think it just began as a typical application of eyeliner and then spiraled out of control. Of course, I’m certainly not the only one. There’s a group that was formed in the late ’60s by Frank Zappa called the GTOs — these weird girls that were groupies, and a lot of their look was like thrift-store, silent-film-era stars. Looking back to the 1930s, the stars wore that makeup because it was the only thing that would show up onscreen, which I think is very interesting.
How would you describe your personal style? You seem to have a great collection of suits.
It’s all about the silhouette — a Bob Dylan–esque silhouette, or as close as I can get to that without being like a speed freak. The dignified structure of a suit feels like armor. When I was a teenager, I used to wear dress jackets all the time. You could find them at the thrift store pretty easily, and I have broad shoulders, so they seem to suit me. It’s been sort of like the foundational aspect of my wardrobe for quite a long time now.
Your voice and music is often described as “timeless” — that’s what Troye Sivan said after he sampled your song. Where do you go to escape time?
There’s moments where you’re just escaping mentally by breathing, listening to music, you know, takes place in the home. Otherwise, I live right next to Elysian Park in Los Angeles, and as cliché as it sounds, I think being in nature is probably the best way.
Do you have a favorite Old Hollywood haunt?
My husband and I often go to Musso & Frank’s. It’s L.A.’s second-oldest restaurant, and it’s a place where a lot of actors and writers used to go. Every booth has a name attached to it, like the Frank Sinatra table or the Chaplin booth. And it’s basically unchanged since those glory days. It has beautiful old dark wood and this gorgeous watercolor hand-painted wallpaper. It feels like all the waiters are apparitions, and I love going there.
By Cat Zhang , 2024-03-26 18:00:07
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