Today I stumbled across a song of Jessica Pratt. Rings a bell, that name? No, not really. After listening to her song „Night Faces“ and looking at the video several times I thought: does she come from the West Coast anno 1969? Is she a time traveller that has enjoyed a bit too much the company of Dr. Who? There is something ghostlike in her high trembling voice that always seems to be able to vanish into space from one moment to the other. But, to my surprise, she doesn’t leave the song by some secret exit long before its end. And the video is good, adds to the dreamlike quality with its flow of apparitions. I was so absorbed by the simple guitar arpeggios, the skeletal and raw mood, the sound of the voice that I only catched some of the words. A distant memory at work? And, then again, this name: Jessica Pratt – and old „psych-folk“ soul swirling around the echoes of a long lost summer. No wonder she’s from San Francisco. Had a look at the cover of her self-titled album – at least she wears no flowers in her hair.
2012 27 Dez
Jessica and the Summer Ghosts
von: Michael Engelbrecht Filed under: Blog | TB | Tags: Zeitreisen | 2 Comments
2 Comments
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Michael Engelbrecht:
Found this later: „You need to know this first: I adore almost every obscure female folk artist from 1965-72, from Karen Dalton and Vashti Bunyan to Linda Perhacs and Sibylle Baier. I’m just a sucker for those kinds of quiet, weird albums that seem to have been recorded alone, late at night, after too much booze or LSD or bad French poetry. The singer is miserable and the guitars sound despondent, and I just can’t get enough. (I’ll admit that I also like their obscurity — the fact that there’s something inherently off about the records that made them flop originally.) So it’s no surprise that I love Jessica Pratt. Here’s a modern day version of this phenomenon, right in our midst! On her self-titled debut (released in November on Birth Records), she absolutely nails the sound, from the slightly watery guitar picking to those pinched, otherworldly vocals to that weird compression that makes it sound like the whole thing was recorded in a bathroom with blankets hung over the tub.“ – Dan Strachota
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Michael Engelbrecht:
Like this song? Might like these, too:
The Roches: The Roches (with Robert Fripp)
Mountain Man: Made The Harbor