“I want to love and be loved, but I also want to be free. The tension between those two things has been the central question of my life,” says Julia Jacklin via recent press releases, reflecting on the theme of The Gem, the Australian singer/songwriter’s fourth LP and first for legendary label 4AD, which dropped this September. The album is named for a back street bar/venue in which Jacklin made herself a regular upon moving to Melbourne from Sydney in 2017. And while the artist ventured away from home to record her first three studio albums, after years on the road, coming out of contract with her label, and in search of a new manager, she decided to do things on her own terms in her own city. The Gem was recorded at Rat Shack, a studio located directly above the album’s namesake, owned by producer, mixer, musician, and Julia’s old drinking buddy Robert Muiños. Although Jacklin and her band – guitarist Jacob Diamond, bassist Mimi Gilbert, and drummer Jess Elwood – intended to record the album in about two weeks, the process wound up running a calendar year, from December of 2024 to December of 2025.
“I thought I’d finished the record a year before I actually did. It was mixed. It was mastered. We had a listening party. We celebrated. And two days later, I was like, It’s not done. I realised that I had not yet healed from some things. I was trying to prove something. I could hear it in the music. I was making choices that I thought like, Somebody will like this, right? Without fully liking it myself… When you get to this phase of being an artist, people have an idea of what you are and the kind of musician you are and the kind of things you write about and the kind of ways you write about them. And then it’s pretty difficult to not let that inform your own sense of self. It can get really weird, where you’re like, Is this what Julia Jacklin would do? And you’re like, Wait – I’m Julia Jacklin.”
The day following The Gem’s September 25th release, Julia Jacklin performed live at the namesake itself (where many album tracks got their live debuts during two unannounced shows prior to their recording), when she presented an intimate crowd with a set comprised of covers (including Kylie Minogue’s “Come Into My World,” Shania Twain’s “You’re Still the One,” and The Strokes’ “Someday”), six of the new LP’s ten tracks, and a handful of favorites. And on October 20th Julia Jacklin kicked off the North American leg of The Gem Tour, that concludes November 21st at our very own Union Transfer, which she first headlined in 2022, following support slots at the Eraserhood venue for Mitski and Andy Shauf. Setlists for the tour, which is now at the halfway point, have featured the brunt of The Gem, in addition to [mostly] singles from 2019’s Crushing and 2022’s PRE PLEASURE, along with one or two songs from 2016’s Don’t Let the Kids Win, songs which you may have heard at Julia Jacklin’s first-ever Philadelphia show when she opened Boot & Saddle for Marlon Williams in September of 2016. Get your tickets below and read my chat with Julia prior to that very show.
*Get your tickets here.
