Our Sin’s The Lovin’ Kind

Jessica Pratt “Get Your Head Out”

Here in the Pitch is one of the best sounding new records I’ve encountered from the past few years. It’s like the audio equivalent of very beautiful black and white photography printed on matte paper so the blacks are especially deep and the grey tones are rich and nuanced. It’s an album where the tonal palette is so carefully selected and the reverb is so precisely calibrated that elements as ordinary as the human voice, an acoustic guitar, or a vintage organ get nudged into painterly abstraction without losing form and function. There’s a poetry to this sound Jessica Pratt and Al Carson have devised that’s very intuitive and in some ways nostalgic but difficult to put into words without resorting to purple prose.

“Get Your Head Out” captivates me in large part because it’s an evocative sensory experience that’s just outside my capacity to describe it. A lot about it feels familiar, but just as much about the recording is either uncanny or triggers a deja-vu effect. Pratt’s composition and vocal performance is clearly rooted in mid-20th century easy listening and I’m pretty sure she and Carson were deliberately aiming for the odd cosmic tonality of mid-century reverb. But despite this old timey quality, the song doesn’t register as a retro pastiche to me. It’s more like reaching back to the music of the past to create an overwhelming romantic atmosphere beyond the boundaries of contemporary fashion, and that’s just as much in the sound of the recording as it is in Pratt’s gorgeous and low-key jazzy vocal melody.

The most mesmerizing element of “Get Your Head Out” is Carson’s organ and mellotron parts, which sound misty or like light reflecting on rippling water at night. Those parts are fairly quiet in the mix, implying a weightlessness relative to Pratt’s voice and guitar. But even those central elements don’t take up too much space in the mix, and the whole song feels light enough to carry on a breeze.

Buy it from Bandcamp.