Jessica Pratt, June McDoom

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Renée Parkhurst

A close-up of Jessica Pratt.

Jessica Pratt

media release: Jessica Pratt, the revered Los Angeles-based artist, recognized as one of the most singular songwriters of her generation, released a new single, “The Last Year,” before the May 3 release of her long-awaited new album, Here in the Pitch, via Mexican Summer. Following the “utterly bewitching” (New York Times) lead single “Life Is” and the “powerful, warm, and entrancing” (Paste) “World on a String,” “The Last Year” is the album’s closing track, and ranks among Pratt’s most gorgeous and bittersweet compositions to date. A song that feels like it could have existed in the Great American Songbook for ages, Pratt sings “I think it’s gonna be fine / I think we’re gonna be together / And the storyline goes forever,” tapping into a universal resolution that offers what she calls a “weird optimism” at the end of a record that leads down some admittedly dark roads. Featuring Pratt’s voice over hollowed guitar strums, “The Last Year” ends with a grand, sweeping piano melody from Al Carlson, providing a bright and hopeful conclusion to Here in the Pitch.

Here in the Pitch is a very different kind of album from Pratt, who, throughout the last 12 years, has become known for her mystical, elusive blend of just her delicate acoustic guitar and breathtaking vocal. Featuring some of her most adventurous music yet, the album's tone can range from comforting and even chipper to a malevolent quality, with the “pitch” in Here in the Pitch referring to both pitch darkness and bitumen, the black viscous substance that forms deep below the surface of the earth. Pratt notes the influence of Los Angeles’ strange, seedy history and the bleak end of the hippy era on the album; “the dark side of the Californian dream.” “I spend a lot of time worrying and imagining bad things happening,” Pratt confesses. “So maybe the idea of creatively inhabiting a character who wields power is interesting.” Five years after her 2019 breakthrough album, Quiet Signs, Here in the Pitch sees Pratt re-emerging with new ambition and new parameters for what her music can be.  

Pratt will be touring with a full band in support of Here in the Pitch, and has already sold out two nights in both London and New York City, plus performances in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

"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." — New York Magazine’s The Cut