If you’re looking for muted mystery, <person>Jessica Pratt</person>’s third album, as its title suggests, will enigmatically oblige. Quiet disquiet has been the California singer-songwriter’s subtle weapon since her debut, and these nine songs, fully and beautifully recorded in a professional studio for the first time, stick to the winning formula, centred around hypnotically simple acoustic repetitions, muted piano and <person>Pratt</person>’s soft siren calls.
The ersatz vintage grain of folkish chamber-pop confections such as This Time Around and Fare Thee Well could almost have you believe she’s some lost, private-pressed psychedelic prophet, dug up by a label like Light in the Attic or Trunk Records, were it not for the post-millennial tone of her child-witch voice, so reminiscent of CocoRosie or early <person>Joanna Newsom</person>. The likes of Here My Love and Poly Blue beguile with an eerie, emotionally distant, dissipated prettiness, adorned with occasional bursts of psych flute. <person>Pratt</person> saves the best for last, though, with the complex, shifting emotions of Aeroplane, which hints at a haunted, Mazzy Star-ish darkness, her voice flitting playfully into deeper registers. It really is the quiet ones you have to watch.