Description
2019, 12″ LP, Polyvinyl Record Company. Green vinyl.
Australian singer hailing from the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, Julia Jacklin, resurfaces with a third album following Don’t Let The Kids Win (2016) and Eastwick / Cold Caller (2017). Opening with arguably the album’s most afflicting number, “Body”, Jacklin’s voice almost inhibits an Edith Piaf-like quality, somewhat shaky but resolute. It’s far from a forlorn listen though, and while “Pressure To Party” may lament such things as fun, it adds an upbeat rhythm to the album’s more down beat numbers, be they “Don’t Know How To Keep Loving You”, to the lowly piano and voice solo of “When The Family Flies In”. Touching on the hallmarks of a true romantic, Jacklin’s music is melancholic as ever, but with her vocals only adding to the warm embrace of the instrumentation, “Crushing” should melt a few hearts yet. – Juno
The second full-length album from Australian singer/songwriter Julia Jacklin, Crushing embodies every possible meaning of it’s title word. It’s an album formed from sheer intensity of feeling, an in-the-moment narrative of heartbreak and infatuation. And with her storytelling centered on bodies and crossed boundaries and smothering closeness, Crushing reveals how our physical experience of the world shapes and sometimes distorts our inner lives. The follow-up to her 2016 debut Don’t Let the Kids Win, Crushing finds Jacklin continually acknowledging what’s expected of her, then gracefully rejecting those expectations. As a result, the album invites self-examination and a possible shift in the listener’s way of getting around the world – an effect that has everything to do with Jacklin’s openness about her own experience.
