Dancing Too Close Behind

Jessica Pratt “Wrong Hand”

Jessica Pratt’s second album benefits greatly from the way it was mic’d. It sounds like there might have been only one used, or maybe two, but it all comes across like it was recorded live to tape in an apartment. You can really feel a sense of space in the sound, and not only in the faint tape hiss. It feels extremely intimate and remarkably fragile. You can hear little errors in her guitar playing here and there, and at some points, actual warping in the tape. (It’s funny how nostalgic that sound feels now, I almost never hear it but I used to hear it almost every day.) Pratt sounds so totally alone on these songs, and that solitude sets her free – this is very much the sort of record that benefits from the emotional vulnerability a person can have when no one else is around to witness it.

Buy it from Amazon.