★★★★☆
Since the release of her lauded single ‘Pool Party’, critics have scrambled over themselves to compare Julia Jacklin to other musicians.
Names like Courtney Barnett and Angel Olsen have all been summoned, while the word ‘alt-Americana’ has been used probably more than is necessary.
’Cause here’s the thing: though Jacklin pays tribute to a host of sonic influences, the most striking element of Don’t Let The Kids Win is how much she sounds like herself. A song like the crashing ‘Coming Of Age’ has a melancholia-tinged might all of its own, while ‘Motherland’ speaks of a complicated mix of the weighty and the everyday.
It is similarly a mistake to pinpoint the record as being about any one particular thing. Though Don’t Let The Kids Win is on first glance a record about finding your place in the world – about establishing guiding philosophies – soon, as a song like ‘Small Talk’ whirls upwards, the futility of making a strict semblance of a narrative out of the record is revealed.
Don’t Let The Kids Win is an album that works on levels that words don’t reach. More than anything else, it is the sound of a singer at full control of their talents; the sound of a generous voice that asks nothing of you but that you listen.
Julia Jacklin’sDon’t Let The Kids Winis available now through Mushroom.
