Jessica Pratt’s voice is almost child-like.
The first thing you notice about Jessica Pratt’s songs is her voice. Almost child-like, it belies the understated elegance of her intimate lo-fi music. Pratt’s warm acoustic guitar and quirky voice inhabit sad songs that could have been recorded in a bedroom loft in 1972 or a swank coffeehouse yesterday. She sings about turbulent love affairs with wistful resignation, and her music often has been associated with the freak folk movement — which includes elements of avant-garde music, baroque pop and psychedelic folk, accompanied by an offbeat vocal style. In Pratt’s case, comparisons to Joni Mitchell, Joanna Newsom, Sibylle Baier and even David Crosby are common.
Not surprisingly, indie music criticism and commentary websites such as Pitchfork and Stereogum adore her. As part of a short tour of the upper Midwest, the 28-year-old Los Angeleno will visit Madison for the first time for a July 15 gig at the Frequency.
Pratt’s story is a good one: She was “just messing around” in 2007 when she recorded several songs with psychedelic punker Tim Presley in San Francisco. He had some studio time, and she had some music. “I never thought of them as a bunch of songs I would release,” Pratt says. “I just thought of that project as sort of a time capsule. I only liked two of the songs at the time.”
She posted the songs on MySpace before Presley created Birth Records specifically to release those songs as Pratt’s self-titled debut in late 2012. The album’s first pressing sold out in less than two weeks. “Tim’s brain is a barometer,” she says. “And I was pleased he liked the material. We had no idea how the album would do, and it did much, much better than we anticipated.”
Pratt worked in a cafe and had, until that point, considered music only a hobby. But she realized that if she applied herself, bigger things would happen.
And they did, in the form of a record deal with Drag City, home over the years to artists as diverse as Pavement, Ty Segall and Presley’s White Fence solo project. The Chicago-based independent label put Pratt on the road, where she’s more or less been since the release of On Your Own Love Again in January.
On stage, Pratt plays a nylon-string acoustic and is accompanied by an electric guitarist, Cyrus Gengras, to create dreamy, mesmerizing tones. And on Pratt’s merch table, in addition to CD and vinyl versions of On Your Own Love Again, you might find a cassette copy, too.
“They’re very cheap to manufacture, and people like them,” she says, adding that many of her fans under the age of 30 opt to buy a tape rather than a CD. “They sound really warm and feel less disposable.”
Just like Pratt’s songs.
