Last summer, while passing through Primavera Sound, Jessica Pratt He had to share a time slot with Lana del Rey, a lethal coincidence that ended up overshadowing the premiere in Spain of the fabulous and abracadabrant ‘Here In The Pitch’, album (of the year) with which the Californian has crowned herself as the absolute queen of twilight folk and timeless incantation. On Saturday, upon his return to Barcelona, there was no competition, so the bewitchment It was total.
Enveloping and intoxicating beauty, a voice that is pure emotion and songs that seem like they have just arrived from some remote pop paradise. Angel Olsen in Laurel Canyon, Burt Bacharach touring the beaches of Brazil and Buffy Sainte-Marie in an enigmatic and skeletal version. Or something like that. Unadulterated magic and tickets sold out for weeks. A day before, the author of ‘On Your Own Love Again’ passed through Madrid and, for whatever reason, her visit resulted in a whopping zero chronicles in the daily press. «I’m so tenderly waiting for you to come along», which he says in the deliciously sibylline ‘Better Hate’.
In the tiny Center Artesà Tradicionàrius, with the room in darkness and a reverential silence only broken by the rounds of applause that accompanied each song, Pratt began by gently cradling ‘World On a String’ («I want to be the sunlight of the century / I want to be a vestige of our senses free», sings, very sweet) and it didn’t take long to open a black hole that, more than another decade, transported to another dimension. The red velvet of ‘Twin Peaks’, a sanatorium for wounded hearts and something similar to what those who saw Joni Mitchell in her early days must have felt.
The concert, it is true, was unusually short, three quarters of an hour of nothing, but taking into account that their last two albums do not reach twenty-eight minutes, it is assumed that the impact of concision and the sublimation of the old saying about what is short and what is good are also an essential part of your proposal. Everything adds up, including the minutes, in concerts of ravishing beauty and artisanal production.
Supported on stage by a keyboardist, a percussionist, a bassist-guitarist and a very discreet saxophonist, the singer-songwriter polished the best of ‘Here In The Pitch’, more open to pop and the Brill Building sound, and retreated to the days of ‘Quiet Songs’ and ‘On Your Own Love Again’ to complete a journey with a view to jazz and autumn song. There they were, dancing in the shadows, the specter of minimalist bossanova of ‘Poly Blue’ and ‘Get Your Head Out’, and the ‘Brian-Wilsonian’ rattle of ‘By Hook or by Crook’; the echoes of Carole King and, more importantly, the wonderful ‘The Last Year’ and ‘Life Is’, grand folk-pop made up of hypnotic guitars, subtle percussion and balsamic voices.
Always straddling between wakefulness and sleep, between folk gravity and pop candor, Pratt is pure mystery embodied in a petite singer-songwriter with wild hair. His voice, as if fresh from the same galaxy that Nick Drake once inhabited, flies over all the instruments, crowns all the arrangements, and tops out with prodigious precision. In Barcelona, for example, he attacked ‘Back, Baby’ and you almost had to pinch yourself to convince yourself that someone could sing like that. The same with ‘On Your Own Love Again’ and ‘Fare Thee Well’, exquisite encores after which it disappeared leaving a trail of magic and emotion. One of the concerts of the year.
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