In 2023, Jessica Pratt experienced a brush with the pop spotlight when Troye Sivan tried her voice on Something to give each other. The occasion suddenly brought his beloved by the critics and mining folk songs of the 60s, but did not change his course; instead, he doubles down on his idiosyncratic sound on his fourth studio album, Here in the Campa warm and open project with a light surf in the style of the Beach Boys.
These nine tracks might be the sunniest songs he's ever recorded, with opener “Life Is” settling like a desert breeze on your skin. But a deeper look reveals a thornier inner story, as she sings about having a bad streak, being “tricked” by life and hiding her skeletons from incoming suitors. “I think I struggle with the dark side of things,” he tells NYLON of writing the album, which he explains with some of the media he was consuming during its creation. Ahead, Pratt breaks down those influences, which include old Judy Garland records, a Beach Boys biopic, and visiting Death Valley for the first time.
great expectations & war and peace
Pratt: I was homeschooled in high school by some kind of barely accredited charter school, so I basically taught myself without textbooks. As a result, I missed out on a lot of classic literature that you come across at that age. I've enjoyed exploring the canon and these two books in particular have drawn me in. I think hope and despair run through both of these stories. There are sort of two main motifs in both books: this idea of striving for a better life, or some kind of virtue, and realizing that your perception of those ideas is distorted or false.
I feel like these kinds of themes like bravado, denial, falling short, facing failure or your own demise permeate the record. There's sort of a villain arc sketched out in every song, which wasn't intentional, but it takes those themes and takes it a step further. I feel like my experience is always fighting my own head, trying to remove your own darkness to get through.
Disaffected jazz-pop
Pratt: There are some key artists that I was listening to a lot and trying to channel. Scott Walker, late-period Judy Garland, Karin Krog, who was a Scandinavian jazz singer, and Steve Kuhn, a jazz guy who did a solo record where he sings. The unifying theme is a world-weary crooner situation, but also people with very unique and idiosyncratic voices. There is an album of Judy Garland performing live at Carnegie Hall in 1961 [Judy At Carnegie Hall]; At this point, his voice has taken on this very woolly, weathered sound, but still has incredible range, power and control. It's this amazing combination, knowing about his life and how screwed up he was.
I'm the type of person who tends to feel a little isolated and like they're walking sometimes. There is something about this world weariness and beleaguered sound that I relate to. If you think about “Get Your Head Out” and “Empire Never Know,” “Nowhere It Was,” “The Last Year,” the stuff toward the end of the record, it's kind of sunny and poppy, but lyrically. it's a little desperate. I like the conflict of these two things.
Love and Mercy (2014)
Pratt: [This] is a biopic about [Beach Boys co-founder] Brian Wilson. The first half of the film is about Brian Wilson's classic 1960s creation [1966’s] Pet sounds, and the second part covers his experience working with Dr. Eugene Landy, who was totally abusive and basically controlled him with pills that made him robotic. Most musical biopics are pretty awful, but this one was great. Part of that comes down to really painstakingly reconstructing certain moments in Beach Boys history [like filming] in the same study Pet sounds Even the wardrobe is really perfect.
[When I was making In The Pitch]I was very interested in the atmosphere of [Pet Sounds], and the way you can hear the sound of the studio, the sound of thick silence. The engineer I worked with, Al Carlson, is also very steeped in Beach Boys history. We had fun with some of the songs trying to tap into sounds that we felt evoked that time period, living in that world mentally, with some of the overdubs.
Death Valley
Pratt: During the making of the record, my father ended up passing away in 2020 and we had to go and clean his apartment. [in Las Vegas]. Along the way, the desert surrounds you. We stopped in Death Valley a couple of times, which I've never seen before, and it's such a strange and bleak place. It's not really that far from LA, but it's completely foreign land. Even the names, Stovepipe Wells, Furnace Creek, Badwater Basin, seem like names from a certain era. I think the older I get, the more amazed I am by places like this.
I think I was thinking about the natural world a little more than before, in relation to music. Maybe it's because in 2020 I also moved to a house surrounded by trees. It is on the side of a hill and you can see the San Gabriel Mountains from the window. I think seeing these things every day has made me think more about the natural world.
Jessica Pratt's 'Here in the Pitch' is now available.
