Jessica Pratt. Photo by Samuel Hess.
Jessica Pratt has announced her fourth studio LP. Titled Here in the Pitch, the album is due out May 3 on Mexican Summer. The news comes with the release of the project’s lead single, “Life Is,” Pratt’s first new song in five years, as well as a music video co-directed by Pratt and Colby Droscher.
The new track is an upbeat forward march into the unknown, a musical representation of undirected ambition whose tone belies an undercurrent of skepticism in the lyrics. Pratt’s delivery is as cheerful as the triumphant drums, bass, and strings that undergird it — production that’s likened in a press release to the orchestral excess of ’60s pop hits like The Walker Brothers’ “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore” — but her words are ever-so-slightly out of sync: “Time is time and time and time again / And what would you say if you can’t get out of here?” she sings. “Time is time and time and time again / To make your escape you’ve captured the captor’s fear.”
It’s an entirely distinct spiritual exercise from the earnest intimacy that characterized previous projects like 2019’s Quiet Signs, but Pratt says it’s “kind of a false flag,” claiming the rest of the album more reflective of her earlier work. “Life came and went and you didn’t land where you thought you would,” she says of the track’s ambiguous theme. “It’s the third act and you’re trying to climb back on the horse before it gets dark.”
According to the press release, the shadowy visual treatment for “Life Is” was shot in New York City late last year and inspired by the films of Kenneth Anger and Stan Brakhage. Watch the video and stream the song on its own below. And scroll further for Here in the Pitch’s cover art and tracklist, as well as Jessica Pratt’s spring and summer tour dates.
Here in the Pitch album art and tracklist
1. Life Is
2. Better Hate
3. World on a String
4. Get Your Head Out
5. By Hook or by Crook
6. Nowhere It Was
7. Empires Never Know
8. Glances
9. The Last Year
Jessica Pratt spring/summer 2024 tour
May 31 - Barcelona, ES - Primavera Sound
June 2 - Paris, FR - L’Alhambra *
June 3 - Brussels, BE - AB Theater *
June 4 – Amsterdam, NL - Zonnehuis *
June 6 – London, UK - Union Chapel *
June 20 - Los Angeles, CA - Teragram Ballroom
June 21 - Pioneertown, CA - Pappy + Harriet’s
June 22 - San Francisco, CA - Bimbo’s 365 Club
June 26 - Seattle, WA - Neumos
June 27 - Portland, OR - Wonder Ballroom
July 24 - New York, NY - Bowery Ballroom
July 26 - Philadelphia, PA - World Cafe Live
July 27 - Cambridge, MA - The Sinclair
* support from Joanna Sternberg
