Jessica Pratt

"Pratt and her acoustic guitar are mostly unaccompanied, and there are occasional imperfections-- buzzing strings, the faint crack of her voice-- that add to its atmosphere of unvarnished intimacy. Her chord progressions are neither neat resolutions nor mournful elegies, which is to say that her songs traverse that vast, somewhat under-explored territory between happy and sad (except for "Titles Under Pressure", which revolves around a hook that goes "The next time, I'm stayin' away from this place/ I cannot make more mistakes"; that one's a heartbreaker.) Even when Pratt sings a line like "All the lights in my life are fading" on "Streets of Mine", there's a bright, resilient note or two that belie how dismal it looks on paper".

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