Julia Jacklin in Concert
"I didn't see it coming/ My coming of age," sings Julia Jacklin on her 2016 debut album ‘Don't Let the Kids Win.' Indeed, this enchanting singer-songwriter has been growing up fast — and in public — ever since the BBC began playing the pop-country performer's first two singles, "Pool Party" and "Coming of Age." These tracks introduced the world to Jacklin's talent for packing an emotionally poignant confessional punch in songs brimming with melodic directness.
Born in Australia's Blue Mountains in 1990, Jacklin was raised by schoolteacher parents, but it was Britney Spears who inspired her to take singing lessons at age 10. Jacklin covered Avril Lavigne and Evanescence songs in her high school band, co-founded the pop-folk group Salta in 2012, and began writing her own songs. She worked on a factory production line making essential oils and honed her craft while living in a garage. When she went solo, Rolling Stone Australia praised her "simple and unadorned" sound, proclaiming Jacklin a "Future Is Now" artist.
She sings with the unadorned sentiment of influences like Doris Day and the Andrews Sisters. But progressive voices like Björk and Billy Bragg also add to her seductive indie-folk vignettes. "Jacklin's debut is pitched somewhere between stark Americana and jagged alt-country," wrote Rolling Stone. "Imagine Cat Power at last call in a honky tonk." She takes stock of her rich inner emotional world in smoky vocals that sometimes camouflage searing condemnations of foolish men.
In 2018, Jacklin premiered her second album, ‘Crushing,' with a pair of singles. "Head Alone" and "Body" reflected her feelings about physical relationships, boundaries, and private spaces. As a performer, and of course as a woman, Jacklin inhabits a world whose demands are sometimes appreciated and sometimes not. As she sings in "Head Alone": "I'll say it till he understands/ You can love somebody without using your hands."
"In all the songs, you can hear every sound from every instrument," Jacklin says of ‘Crushing.' She wants listeners to hear each nuance of her quietly devastating and whip-smart ruminations. "You can hear my throat and hear me breathing," adds this most intimate of musical confidants.
