Photo by Nick Mckk

When we catch up with Australian indie-folk artist Julia Jacklin before her upcoming show this Saturday, November 9th, she mentions that she’s sitting in her friend’s attic in Nashville fooling around with a drumkit. “You should do it,” she comments, “it’s quite fun and liberating.” It’s  Jacklin’s convicted sense of self, her charming demeanor as anything but “another blonde girl with an acoustic guitar,” that lures in spectators and listeners alike.  

Night after night, Jacklin strives to do justice to her deeply personal songs. Last time she visited Boston and played a sold out Great Scott, she remembers a downpour and being scolded by a drunk audience member for standing in front of the bathrooms. Since then, she’s become more resilient. While on tour in support of her 2019 breakthrough album, Crushing, her relationship to her own music evolves as she explores the territory of being, as Jacklin says, “loud and a chick.” Leaving behind past insecurities of being a “folk shitty Joni Mitchell,” she challenges convention through her candid lyrics, gaining power and confidence through volume on stage with her electric guitar in hand. 

On Crushing, she appeals to listeners on a universal level by taking on themes of intimacy, freedom, and confinement. “A lot of the things I sing about are things I’m still processing,” Jacklin says. “It’s nice to be singing them now and realizing how I’ve changed in the last year and how my life has changed.” One way that she evokes this rawness is by using repetition in her songs. On Crushing, for example, she imposes involuntary self-reflection on her listeners by singing the couplet, “Don’t know how to keep loving you / Now that I know you so well” eight times to close out the song, engulfing her listeners as the repeated line seeps in, a recurring theme throughout the album. 

Her honest lyricism isn’t the only thing that intrigues her listeners. Jacklin’s artistic vision for Crushing through video and photo creates a strong visual narrative deliberately complementing  her music. She mentioned that when she writes a song, she thinks about the music video straight away.

For example, the artistic choices behind her video for opening track “Body,” were co-directed with long-term collaborator Nick McKinlay, a friend since high school. Jacklin’s vision behind her videos relies on two things:location and outfit. “The rest,” she says, “is simple.” She views her videos as the ideal medium to pull apart the song, represent it in a different way, using visuals to prop it up while letting the song be the hero of the narrative. 

The closing shot for “Body,” features Jacklin dancing with closed eyes in front of a makeshift star in a meadow. They shot the film in one day, driving six hours out to get to this specific landscape in the Hay Plane (also the title of a track on “Don’t Let The Kids Win.”) part of Australia. They filmed along the way with only fifteen minutes of daylight left to get the closing image. Julia admits the star is an homage to Britney Spears’ music video for “Lucky,” but “a cheap DIY Australian version of that scene.” 

Given how intentionally curated her videos are, Jacklin shares that she chooses clothes that are uncomfortable⁠—becoming physical tools of engagement with the characters she embodies. Both dresses in “Body” and “Head Alone” forced her to figure out how to move in discomfort as she sings about the restrictions of being a woman. “You know that I told you before that you hold me too tight,” she sings as she runs through a modern suburban street in a beautiful yet confining floral dress, a metaphor as strong as the words themselves. 

Still from “Head Alone”

As someone who labors over details like outfits and lyrics, overthinking can obscure the reason one makes music in the first place. In an effort to let go of the idea that their work determines who they are and whether they’re successful human beings, she and friend Elizabeth Hughes collaborated on the care-free, chaotic, and upbeat Phantastic Ferniture, a foil to Jacklin’s solo work. The group sought to have fun and run with first ideas, helping Julia learn to “create things, let them go, and move on,” instead of chasing perfection. “Music should be enjoyable,” Jacklin says. “Otherwise, it’s not worth it.”

This Saturday, Somerville Theater will see Julia Jacklin fully embracing that enjoyment. We’re excited to sing along with Jacklin, even as she’s still processing her words.  The human element isn’t there at every show, but with Jacklin, and her songs from Crushing, you can’t escape it.

Buy tickets to her show with Christian Lee Hutson on Saturday, November 9 here.