The Gem is the first Julia Jacklin album recorded in Melbourne, at Rat Shack Studios above The Gem, the small Collingwood bar that puts bands on the floor in one corner.
Jacklin drank there often after moving to Melbourne in 2017. When anyone needed a break from the sessions, they went downstairs and watched whoever was playing.
She made her fourth record out of contract with her old label and without a manager. Her past albums took two weeks. After a false start, this one took almost a year.
Brand New opens slow, on occasional strums and steady drums, until overlapping vocals take off: “Brand new (I’m free now let me be).” On God Sometimes, bright keys and distorted guitar fight over the song. God keeps turning up across the record, along with neglected, withering plants.
If I Had The Hand Of God starts small – “Standing in the yard/Trying not to drink/Looking at my neighbour eat a peach over the sink” – then its choruses hit like divine intervention.
Jacklin can still split your heart with a couplet. The Hardest Thing mourns a breakup: “The hardest thing to do is believe it when you say ‘I love you’/The hardest thing to do is stick around trying to convince you.” Walk On Me goes darker, into a demeaning relationship: “Don’t want anyone else to see what I let you do to me.”
Past the halfway mark of Real Life, a male voice joins hers in unison, and it’s swoon central. Get Away From Me (I Think I’ll Love You Soon) sends up her own lovergirl habits.
I Wish is a lullaby for her younger self. Elsie and Maggie Rigby of The Maes sing it with her, and the three of them harmonising is as transcendent as you’d hope.
Her voice and harmonies lead, but the band carry plenty: guitarist Jacob Diamond, bassist Mimi Gilbert and drummer Jess Elwood. On the last day of sessions they all got matching tattoos of a small circle for an opal, inked by one of The Gem’s bartenders.
“What kind of life is that?/After the show/Become an outline to everyone you know.” Jacklin’s calling the shots now.
The Gem is out now via 4AD/Remote Control Records.
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