29 August 2022 – review by Jeremy Bean-Hodges
The expectations for Julia Jacklin’s third album, Pre Pleasure, are sky-high following the breakout success of her sophomore effort, Crushing (2019). The immense emotional power of songs like Don’t Know How to Keep Loving You and Pressure to Party, charting a turbulent course through a difficult breakup, exposed Jacklin to an international audience and brought her opportunities like performing at Austin City Limits, and duetting with Lana Del Rey.
The good news – for Jacklin, especially – is that she seems to be a lot happier than she was three years ago. Pre Pleasure charts a course through her social conditioning as a (lapsed) Catholic, as a woman, and as a daughter, through her sexuality and her relations to others. It lays down a cohesive and well-thought-out narrative that sees her grow as a person.
The album starts with its lead single, Lydia Wears a Cross. There’s one immediate signal that this isn’t 2019’s Julia Jacklin: a drum machine. It’s still backed by sparse piano, so she hasn’t dispensed with her old self entirely, but it’s a statement of intent to move away from her identity as sad-woman-with-guitar. The song itself revisits Jacklin’s own upbringing in a religious school. Jacklin slyly observes the disconnect between a child’s enjoyment of the pageantry of religion, and the actual meaning of its rituals by well-chosen examples: Vivian sings along but doesn’t get a single word right, Julia feels pretty in the outfits, but doesn’t understand the nature of God. It’s a deceptively strong statement about indoctrination.
Next is another pre-release single, Love, Try Not to Let Go, also a sparse piano-driven arrangement, but without the driving beat that propels Lydia Wears a Cross. All four singles from Pre Pleasure (including I Was Neon and Be Careful With Yourself) have strong thematic ideas, but three of them have an achilles heel, in that they just alternate between just two chords in A-B-A-B fashion for the vast majority of the song. That’s not to say that a great song can’t be written on two chords – Born in the USA is the most famous example – but it leaves the singles from Pre Pleasure feeling like they are still missing a chorus.
The first album track is Ignore Tenderness. It opens with a tight three-piece arrangement between guitar, drums and bass, plus Jacklin trying to understand why she isn’t attracted to an unnamed person. It’s a great opening; why isn’t this the lead single? I’ve been watching porn / Lights off, headphones on. Ah – that’s why.
Never mind whether it’s the lead single or not – Ignore Tenderness takes direct aim at the social conditioning around female heterosexuality, and scores hit, after hit, after hit. Let them slap you about /
Go on, choke yourself out, and Beneath the sheets, you’re just a cave / A plastic bucket, or a grave, and, with withering displeasure, You are what you gave away. Jacklin isn’t scared of getting explicit, either in this song, or in a later one called Magic, about her desire to conjure miracles between the sheets. Although she isn’t the first musician to sing directly about sex, both songs are so raw that you actively feel self-conscious listening to it. Other singers, from Cardi B to Anthony Kiedis, serve their sexuality with a cloak of swagger and bravado. Pre Pleasure neither pulls nor sugarcoats its punches, and so it feels like overhearing a private phone conversation. It’s a hugely impressive and courageous way to tackle the subject.
Jacklin becomes more positive, and the music more upbeat, toward the end of the album. Be Careful With Yourself revisits her familiar territory of dispensing positive life advice; End of a Friendship charts a sad series of events, but in a philosophical and mature manner. What is impressive about Pre Pleasure as a whole is its thematic cohesion; it is definitely not just a collection of songs. It’s a thorough story arc of Jacklin’s personal struggle against the expectations of her upbringing, her education, and the external messaging she consumes, and her desire to hold on to her own identity throughout.
Unfortunately, however, the music does leave a little too much of the heavy lifting to the lyrics. As noted before, the singles feel like they stay in the one place throughout their running time. The middle of Pre Pleasure does sag a little, too – Too Young to Die and Less of a Stranger are both sparse, slow tracks back-to-back where there’s probably only room for one, while Moviegoer feels like a light throwaway compared to the meatiness of the rest of the album.
A lot of people fell in love with Crushing, but the raw pain and collapse it conveyed was too much for any more than one album. Pre Pleasure retains Crushing‘s innate talents for introspection, self-awareness and vulnerability, but delivers blunt honesty rather than personal devastation. Some of Jacklin’s moves into new sonic territory hit, and some of them miss – but overall, Pre Pleasure is an intense, intelligent and relatable album.
Julia Jacklin is also on tour next year in February – for tickets and dates go here
Pre Pleasure is out now through Liberation Records.
