Album review: Quiet Signs by Jessica Pratt
Photo courtesy of Mexican Summer
Jessica Pratt
Quiet Signs
Mexican Summer
Score: B+
Fans of resurgent folk artist Vashti Bunyan rejoice, for the logical next step in sprightly falsetto-folk is the California-based Jessica Pratt, with her latest album Quiet Signs being the spiritual successor to Bunyan’s 1970 cult classic Just Another Diamond Day.
In what is easily one of the purest distillations of folk music in the past few years, Pratt’s Quiet Signs are fragile vocals sang through the nose, whirring stanzas over nearly too-thin guitar strums and nine poignant tracks.
Meant in the best way possible, Pratt sounds a lot like Julia Holter with a cold, or Nico pitched up in post-production. This is a good thing.
It’s an album that kind of comes out of left field, not done justice by it’s cover and it’s worth the listen if only in it’s calling back to those tempestuous days of cabin-folk recorded and pressed on wax.
– Alec Warkentin
