4/5 stars
Tape hiss is a prominent feature on Jessica Pratt’s On Your Own Love Again. It’s a signal that you’re going to be drawn in and held at close quarters so that Pratt can seduce you with her enigmatic, helium-sucking vocals and harp-like guitar plucking. You have little choice but to be completely engaged over the half-hour of storytelling that follows.
Anyone these days who plays an acoustic guitar and is considered ‘quirky’ is immediately categorised as ‘freak folk’, but Pratt’s style is more in line with classic folksters like Marianne Faithfull and Nick Drake. On Your Own Love Again has a timeless folk feel but it’s still fresh and vital. Pratt sticks to a stripped-back, skeletal framework but scatters the songs with sonic surprises. For instance, the final-minute chord change on ‘Game That I Play’ subtly changes the tone and also makes it act like a segue to the following song, ‘Strange Melody’.
There are some sad subjects dealt with here but it’s never a downer. Pratt is bewildered by the ‘moon dudes’ of her past, though she never lets the baggage of the past weigh her down, and delivers an evocative work that makes good on the promise of her 2012 debut.
