🎧 Approved: Julia Jacklin

Australian songwriter Julia Jacklin makes warm, fuzzy indie-folk with a husky, crackling alto that tends to stay with you. Three albums in, she’s one of the most reliable voices in the genre. New album ‘The Gem’ is out this Friday.

It’s final single, ‘If I Had The Hand Of God’, is country-nodding and cathartic - overdriven guitars, a marching drumbeat, Jacklin precise, full of feeling. Written after a surreal trip to Nashville, it’s about the life of a touring musician and the importance (or unimportance) of legacy. “After the show, become an outline to everyone you know”, she sings. 

The album was recorded above a Melbourne pub of the same name, in converted rooms upstairs. As a residential bar, they couldn’t record late into the night and sound bleed was a “glorious constraint” - foot traffic from the hairdresser and tattoo parlour next door, the kitchen crew and bands playing below.

On the last day of sessions the band got matching tattoos; a neat little circle to represent an opal, Jacklin’s favourite gemstone, done by one of the bartenders. “It did really feel like we’d done something special together”, she says. “I’m glad we all have these little gems on us”.

Her UK and European tour is from February. Go!

🎧 Watch the video to ‘If I Had The Hand Of God’ below