Julia Jacklin - Don't Let The Kids Win

180-gram blue swirl vinyl

Captivating folk-rock debut from Julia Jacklin

"Every now and then you hear a new voice and little else seems to matter. Julia Jacklin's is one such voice." —
The Guardian

In person Julia Jacklin is funny, wry, quick to crack a joke. It makes the blunt honesty and prickly insight laced through her songwriting disarming, a dissonance she delights in. "Especially coming from my family," says Jacklin. "They don't talk about feelings at all. I love writing songs about them and watching them listen and squirm. To me that's great. I enjoy it."

Jacklin's masterful debut album is Don't Let The Kids Win — an intimate examination of a life still being lived Recorded at New Zealand's Sitting Room studios with Ben Edwards (Marlon Williams, Aldous Harding, Nadia Reid), Don't Let The Kids Win courses with the aching current of alt-country and indie-folk, augmented by Jacklin's undeniable calling cards: her rich, distinctive voice, and her playful, observational wit.

You can hear it in opener "Pool Party," a gorgeous lilt bristling with Jacklin's tale of substance abuse by the pool; in the sparse, "Elizabeth," wrestling with both devotion and admonishment of a friend; in detailing the slow-motion banality of a relationship breakdown in the woozy "L.A Dreams"; and in her resolve to accept the passing of time on the snappy fuzz of "Coming Of Age." The album hums with peripheral insights, minute in their moments but together proving an urge to stay curious.

"I thought it was going to be a heartbreak record," says Jacklin of Don't Let The Kids Win. "But in hindsight I see it's about hitting 24 and thinking, "What the fuck am I doing?" I was feeling very nostalgic for my youth. When I was growing up I was so ambitious: I'm going to be this amazing social worker, save the world, a great musician, fit, an amazing writer. Then you get to mid-20s and you realise you have to focus on one thing. Even if it doesn't pay off, or you feel embarrassed at family occasions because you're the poor musician still, that's the decision I made."

The title track was the last song Jacklin wrote for the album. "My sister's getting married soon," she says of the closer. "And it hit me - we used to be two young girls and now that part of our lives is over. Seeing her talking about wanting to have a baby and...it's like, man I can't believe we're already here."

Don't mistake this awareness for nostalgia. "It's not that I want to go back to that time at all," says Jacklin. "It's trying to figure out how to be responsible when you don't identify with who you were anymore."

 

 

 

 

Side 1

Pool Party

Leadlight

Coming of Age

Elizabeth

Motherland

Side 2

Small Talk

L.A. Dream

Sweet Step

Same Airport, Different Man

Hay Plain

Don't Let the Kids Win

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