Album of the week: Julia Jacklin – 'The Gem': an album of reinvention and re-emergence

“This bar is off the tourist map but worth finding. The interior is quirky with an eclectic mix of stuff… The BBQ is to die for and the bands they get in to play are always super different and interesting... The few times that I have been here this place has been literally packed to the brim, but since it is hidden away in the back streets means that you are only going to get people that know about this place here, other than randoms simply wondering off the street…”

The randoms of Trip Advisor have spoken: The Gem in Melbourne is a great little neighbourhood boozer. After relocating from Sydney a decade ago, Julia Jacklin stumbled across the pub. Trying to find her feet, and her people, in a new city, it became a welcoming place for the singer-songwriter hang, to chill, to low-key network with the musicians who frequented the place.

Fast-forward to 2023. After three brilliant albums – Don’t Let the Kids Win (2016), Crushing (2019) and Pre Pleasure (2022) – and multiple international tours and the completion of her record contract, Jacklin was looking for a reset. Where better to do that than The Gem?

The result: 10 warm, woozy, hypnotic tracks, recorded in bits and pieces, fits and starts, at the pace the songs and her muse demanded, in Rat Shack Studios, located above her favourite pub. Her co-producer is Robert Muinos, owner of the studio. Her wingwomen and -men are Gem-friendly musicians from the world of those bands that are “always super different and interesting”.

The Gem is an album of reinvention and re-emergence. As Jacklin sings in the indie-rock shuffle of opener ‘Brand New’, “I’m free now let me be brand new”. On the art-grunge of ‘God Sometimes’, a plangent mix of Throwing Muses and The Lemonheads, she’s talking and taking agency: “you have to be a god sometimes / force the moment to shift / unlike the mountain / you gotta move it”. On the bittersweet ‘The Hardest Thing’, she’s taken her own advice and moved on, but the confusion and upsett are still raging: “where to go now? / I stood behind the horses to find hey’re running towards nothing…”

Julia Jacklin - If I Had The Hand Of God [Official Video] - YouTube

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A highpoint: the shuffling, syncopated rhythms of ‘Real Life’, a vocally hushed, beautifully observed portrait of domestic bliss gone amiss: “Had a dream that I watered your plants, it felt like real life / I didn’t do it I didn’t even try / now all your plants have died”. Ouch.

An even higherpoint: the simple, stark, spartan folk of ‘Angel Vision’. Jacklin’s voice tingles like Mary Margaret O’Hara’s (no higher praise), the backing vocals of acoustic guitarist Jacob Diamond embrace and reassure, and Richard Bradbeer’s double-bass adds just the right amount of robustness to this most delicate of songs.

Back on Trip Advisor, they’re still ungrammatically digging the place. “[The Gem] is worth a try if you want to experience true Australians not tourist traps.” Equally, The Gem is worth a listen if you want to experience true, heartfelt, crafted-above-a-pub, rooted-in-the-soul artistry. A gem? Yeah, it is.