The “WAP” revolution, it appears, has reached the folkies. Over two albums of sublime folk and glowering atmospheric rock – 2016’s Don’t Let the Kids Win and 2019’s Crushing – Melbourne-via-Blue Mountains singer Julia Jacklin made a name for herself as not just an imaginative songwriter, but as a frank and forthright lyricist, tackling topics such as revenge porn and sexuality crises. Her third album Pre Pleasure, recorded in Montreal with The National producer Marcus Paquin, further embraces the ideal that openness in modern songwriting should extend far beyond the emotional into all aspects of the female psyche.
Alongside songs of love, religion, self-doubt, family and lost friendship, then, Jacklin sings of bedroom role-playing a sexy magician “naked beneath the cape”, and of watching porn to try (and fail) to turn herself on. Thanks to the likes of Peaches, St Vincent, Khia, Cardi B and now Jacklin, overt sex in music, stripped of metaphorical veil, is no longer solely the territory of leering horndogs such as the Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Bloodhound Gang or Blink-182. Pre Pleasure is one of those rare records that reveals the whole artist, cheap kicks and all.
