Julia Jacklin ProfileFor her fourth album, Julia Jacklin went back to what makes sense to her: her love for music. There’s no over-explaining or exaggeration, and, aside from one six-minute song, the tracks fly by, washing over listeners with each melody and riff.
The bio for the Australian singer-songwriter’s fourth album, The Gem, includes a statement in which she details the central question of her life – wanting to love and be loved, but also be free. It’s a sentiment that’s arrived with tension, and it’s what underpins her latest record.
Melbourne-based fans might do a double take at the title. She is, indeed, referencing the Collingwood pub of the same name, where she spent plenty of time after moving to Melbourne from Sydney in 2017, pushing herself outside her comfort zone.
The Gem follows three celebrated solo records from Jacklin: 2016’s Don’t Let The Kids Win, 2019’s Crushing, and 2022’s PRE-PLEASURE. Within those albums, she shared all-too-relatable stories about relationships: love, heartbreak and loss – plus powerful musings about bodily autonomy.
Ahead of her fourth album, however, she faced uncertainty after wrapping a record deal and seeking a new manager. She describes that period as “liberating” and “scary,” and has since signed with 4AD.
Really, The Gem tracks Jacklin’s journey back to herself. Chatting with The Music on a sunny Melbourne day, she recalls realising that her job as a musician “can just be simple.”
“There’s so many things about this job that can get in your head and make you feel crazy; it can split you in two,” she says. “Because, you know, I have to have this public version of myself, but then it’s also my birth name. It’s two different things.
“I’ve been very tortured in the past by many things, but this album just reminded me how much… I’ve loved singing, playing, and music since I was a child. It’s quite simple, actually. It’s my greatest love.”
Jacklin adds that she’s discovered a newfound importance in people in her life seeing her as herself. “I made it with people who are good friends who really know me and like me and respect me,” she notes. “The environment that you’re in is way more important than we realise, and who we have in our lives and who we have around us.
“Even if you feel really strong in yourself, it impacts your life incredibly. I learned lots of things, but I think I also came down from the weird mountain that this job can kind of put you on sometimes and was reminded that, ‘Oh, it’s kind of just supposed to be making music with your friends.’
“That’s it; it doesn’t actually have to be that complicated, even though it can make you feel like this is a very complicated thing.”
For the first time, Jacklin made an album in Melbourne. Teaming up with Rat Shack Studios owner Robert Muinos – whose studio happens to be situated directly above The Gem, the pub – Jacob Diamond on guitar, Mimi Gilbert on bass, and Jess Elwood (Alex Lahey, Angie McMahon) on drums, they planned to smash out The Gem in two weeks. However, that plan wasn’t meant to be.
“The Gem felt like a metaphor for the whole process, because a lot of it did feel like digging. I felt like I was almost doing it in the dark, just trusting that I was going to find something,” Jacklin previously explained. “I thought I’d finished the record a year before I actually did. It was mixed. It was mastered. We had a listening party. We celebrated. And two days later, I was like, it’s not done.”
After another eleven months of tinkering in the studio, Jacklin has emerged with a record she’s proud of. Some songs, like the eclectic album opener Brand New and the electronic-inspired Real Life, have been totally reimagined.
“Brand New used to be a completely different song,” Jacklin admits. “It was called Dress Shoes, which was a terrible title.
“It was kind of like an old country song, and I don’t know, it was one of those – that was the song that was on the first version of the record that I just felt like, I don’t think this is very good, but a few people really liked it. But I just knew that something was not quite right in my heart.”
So she started experimenting with parts of the song by herself before taking it to Muinos and having a “really fun day” putting the reimagined track together. “And that made me realise, ‘Oh wait, I have to keep making this record. It’s not over.’ I think sometimes you can forget to have fun in the studio.
“You’re thinking too much about the product at the end, but you’re supposed to play around and have fun sometimes in the studio; that’s the whole point. I think that song was a great reminder for me.”
Brand New is also home to a surprising obsession. “I mean, the honest answer is I had just become obsessed with the Madonna album, Music, that I loved when I was a kid, but I just hadn’t re-listened to it.”
Reflecting on that album’s song, Don’t Tell Me, which features acoustic guitar elements that were “all chopped up and sped up,” Jacklin says she tried to put her mark on a similar-sounding track. “That’s kind of what we were trying to do. We were trying… I was trying to be Madonna, but with a lot less money and people who know how to do computer music [laughs].
“It was me and Rob just trying to make something that isn’t really in our wheelhouse. That’s probably my favourite on the record.”
Brand New is followed by two songs with the word “God” in the title: God Sometimes and If I Had the Hand of God – the latter just released as a single. Plus, track five is a song called Angel Vision. But they’re far from religious offerings.
God Sometimes tells a story about choosing not to be a passenger in your own life, while If I Had the Hand of God ponders whether it's possible to be a touring musician and a good person. The tracks weren’t intentionally written to be sequenced together like that; it’s just how things worked out.
“I actually thought, ‘Oh, I don’t know about having them next to each other,” she says. “That seems a bit weird, but then, it’s really hard to do track listing when you only have ten songs. It’s truly one of the hardest parts of the end part of the record.”
She adds, “They just had to be. And now I do like it because I like how with God Sometimes, I’m saying, yeah, it’s really great; you need to have the hand of God sometimes in order to make change in your life. And then it’s immediately followed up with a song that’s questioning that immediately.
“I like the contradictions of those two things, because I think that’s a really true reflection of how I feel on a day-to-day basis. Like, sometimes I feel really powerful, and then other times I feel completely without agency. So, yeah, I do like them next to each other now.”
While she’s trying new things on her fourth album, The Gem still has elements of nostalgia. From paying tribute to the pub that’s a part of her story to working with close collaborators and adding another sprawling number to her discography, fans of Jacklin’s previous works are sure to be moved.
Outside of the album, though, Jacklin has mused on important moments in her life as a musician in the book, It’s Not For You: Inside the Artists Rewriting the Rules of the Australian Music Scene.
Written by Camp Cope bassist and MusicNSW’s Kelly-Dawn Hellmrich, the book features interviews and essays by Australian genre-defying trailblazers including Amy Taylor, Anna Lunoe, BARKAA, Vika & Linda, Marcia Hines, Angie McMahon, Fanny Lumsden, and more.
Jacklin’s chapter of the book sits firmly in her beginnings as an artist. Now, years later, she explains that her career trajectory might have been very different if she didn’t meet Camp Cope nearly a decade ago.
“That was really great because I truly think that Camp Cope changed my life and my ability to do this work,” she says. “We just had a very interesting experience.
“I met them at Falls Festival; it was my first album; it was such a daunting time of doing my first festival tours and stuff like that. I’m so grateful that I intersected with them at that time because I feel like they led me on the right path of what’s important.”
She adds, “I'm really good friends with [Sarah] Thomo [Thompson]; Thomo has been a mentor to me and such an important presence in my life. Like, it makes me emotional. They just really guided me through this work and this industry. I truly don’t know where I would be if I hadn’t intersected with them at the beginning.”
“It was so nice, I guess nearly ten years on from that, just having that chat with Kelly and reflecting on that time and also giving me the opportunity to reflect on the impact that had on me. And Kelly’s such an angel.
“I’m so grateful to those guys. I sang with them and played guitar at their final show at the Opera House. That was just so cool because of how much they impacted my life – it was like a fever dream. So, yeah, love those guys.”
Before dropping If I Had the Hand of God on Tuesday, Jacklin had already shared three singles from The Gem: Get Away from Me (I Think I’ll Love You Soon), The Hardest Thing, and I Wish (featuring The Maes). Get Away from Me and The Hardest Thing sound like they’ve been transported from jangle-rock heaven, while I Wish is tender and contains stunning harmonies.
“I’m always getting inspiration from all kinds of places,” she says. “With the three singles, for example, it’s like, you know, Get Away from Me, I think, was influenced by RVG and The Go-Betweens and The Church.
“I Wish is kind of my The Roaches or Iris DeMent or Gillian Welch style inspo. And then I feel like The Hardest Thing was – I was listening to ‘90s rock and wanting to make something that just sounded like sunshine, you know, which is not usually what I am approaching music like.”
The Hardest Thing was born from listening to American rock bands like Letters to Cleo and Sugar Ray. “We always talked about that song as being my Sugar Ray song,” Jacklin shares. “Because I just wanted ‘90s music that was fun to listen to but also had emotional depth. I feel like my inspiration is very vast and wide.”
Speaking of Sugar Ray, Jacklin recently returned to triple j’s Like A Version to cover their song, Every Morning. It’s her second Like A Version, following her renowned rendition of The Strokes’ Someday (coincidentally, Sugar Ray also have a song called Someday).
Discussing what draws her to those periods of rock music, Jacklin explains that they mark a simpler time of her life and come from a pure enjoyment of music.
“The answer that I think is maybe the most honest would be that that was the music that was on the radio when I was a child,” she says. “In my teens, I went through such a strange period of liking things in private, pretending to like things in public to be cool.
“I would like some things around some people, you know, it was just such a nightmare of trying to understand what my actual taste is, or what am I trying to like? Because I think that’ll make me seem like a more interesting person.”
When revisiting the songs from her childhood, though, Jacklin remembers a “really pure period” of just liking things, no defence needed. “I had no clue if they were cool or not, and so I just think there’s a lot of music from that era that is so deep in my heart in a way that I can never shake it.”
She adds, “I think people assume I’m like this huge The Strokes fan. I like The Strokes, but it’s just because it was introduced to me at a time when I had such a pure reaction to music.
“I think that Someday and Every Morning are two songs from around the age of 10 that I heard and was just like, ‘I love this.’ I’m not even thinking about why or who the band even is. It’s nice to just honour that version of myself.”
On her albums Don’t Let the Kids Win and Crushing, Jacklin unveiled sprawling, five-minute-plus epics like Hay Plain, Body, and Turn Me Down. These songs feature only a few guitar chords, and that’s what makes them special—your patience is rewarded. It’s all about the journey; about paying attention to lyrics and storytelling.
On The Gem, Jacklin shares her longest song yet, Walk On Me, another powerful epic that calls to mind songs like Diving Woman by Japanese Breakfast or A House in Nebraska by Ethel Cain. And towards the end, Jacklin nearly roars, her voice shaking as she regains control.
“Walk On Me is my longest song I’ve ever recorded. It’s like six minutes, I think,” she says. “And also, this album has the shortest songs I’ve ever recorded as well, which is just funny.
“Honestly, Turn Me Down has a few more chords, but like Hay Plain and Walk On Me are… they’re the same two chords, those two songs. So, the same two chords over and over again for many minutes. I just really love those songs.
“I’m a sucker for two chords and five minutes, and you just let the melody and the feeling with the band take priority. They just feel like they’re more intuitive and less crafty, where you’re trying to kind of go, ‘Okay, I need a pre-chorus and a chorus and this and that.’ They’re really nice to play in the set as well because they let you just really settle in, and they’re quite meditative, I think, as a player.
“I love it when it gets to the three-minute mark, and then you’re like, ‘Oh, we’re still going,’ but you’re so locked in. You just get to go on such a beautiful journey, I think.”
The Gem is released on Friday, 25 September, via 4AD/Remote Control Records.
