Jessica Pratt

From the opening seconds "Life Is," it’s clear that Here in the Pitch is a very different kind of album from Jessica Pratt. The revered Los Angeles artist has become one of the most singular and distinctive songwriters of her generation, largely through the bewitching sound of her acoustic guitar and vocals: a mystical, elusive blend that conjures deep emotional responses from her devoted (and patient) audience.

Five years after her breakthrough album, which marked her first time working in a studio, Pratt has re-emerged with new ambition and new parameters for what her music can be. She quickly envisioned a more expansive set of influences — “big panoramic sounds that make you think of the ocean and California” — and the results are evident in the dynamic repertoire of instruments accompanying her graceful, dreamlike melodies.

If Pratt’s early albums seemed beamed in from a dimly lit bedroom somewhere in the distant past, these songs stand on more solid ground. With Here in the Pitch, Pratt comes as close as she ever has to a feeling of perfection — to music you can reach out and touch in the air around you, to summoning with every note the hope and mystery, the horror and romance, that lingers within the silence.