Jessica Pratt - Quiet Signs (LP)

Jessica Pratt writes songs that feel like they were discovered in the quiet part of the night, when city noise thins out and every little sound gets a halo. Quiet Signs arrived in February 2019 on Mexican Summer, her third album, and it still feels like a secret you lean in to hear. The record is short, about half an hour, but it lingers. She had already made a name with hushed, home-recorded folk, yet this time she stepped into a studio and let the air around her voice bloom a little. The intimacy stayed. The haze got richer.

You can hear that shift right away. Opening Night sets the table with a brief, spectral prelude, then the lights dim and the room narrows to that bright, bell-like voice and fingerpicked guitar. The production is minimal, almost translucent, but not bare. You catch a drifting flute line, a soft organ bed, a piano figure that almost vanishes as it lands. Pratt coaxes tension from space and timing, so the songs move like slow tides rather than clockwork. It is a studio record, but it still feels handmade.

Her writing has always been elliptical, closer to a cinema cutaway than a diary entry. Quiet Signs doubles down on that strength. This Time Around carries a pulse that suggests late night trains and second chances, and she sings with the kind of poise that makes you believe she has lived every shadow inside it. Poly Blue shimmers like heat off pavement, a melody that curls around itself and never quite resolves the way you expect. Fare Thee Well is the sort of farewell that sounds kind, but it tilts on an ache she never overplays. She lets the phrasing do the work. A stray turn of melody, a held note, the hush after a chorus, those are the tells.

A lot of the record’s spell comes down to touch. The guitar is clean and close, no strum too loud, the reverb just long enough to ghost the edges. The keys sit low in the mix, almost like a memory someone is trying to hold still. That restraint is why the record invites repeat listens. The details are there, they just do not elbow for attention. You hear fresh corners each time. People often compare her to 60s and 70s folk singers, and sure, there are echoes in the timbre and the way she shapes vowels, but the atmosphere here is its own world. It is less a throwback than a quiet, modern room built with old wood.

Critics clocked the shift immediately. Pitchfork tagged Quiet Signs as Best New Music, and for good reason. It narrows her focus and raises her game. The Guardian went strong on it too, noting how much power she draws from a near-whisper. That dynamic is the record’s heartbeat. She never needs volume to find intensity. The songs edge forward, then pull back, like a conversation where the important part happens when someone looks away.

I kept thinking about places when I first lived with this album. A dim corner table at a small bar. A seat by the window on a bus after 11. Even a Melbourne record store on a slow weekday, where the room is quiet enough that a single voice can thread through the racks. That is the best way to hear Quiet Signs, with the day turned down a few clicks. And if you are crate digging, the Quiet Signs vinyl is worth the reach. Her music loves the deep groove and the extra air around instruments that a good pressing gives. If you like to buy Jessica Pratt records online, this one belongs next to On Your Own Love Again. Jessica Pratt vinyl tends to disappear quickly, and fans who collect Jessica Pratt albums on vinyl know how often her records go out of stock.

More than anything, this is a record about presence. It arrives gently, stays close, and leaves you with a calm that feels rare. If you are in the habit of sending friends links with a note that says just trust me, put this on, here is your next message. And if you are hunting through bins anywhere, from a neighborhood shop to vinyl records Australia sellers with a good folk section, keep an eye out. Quiet Signs is small in size, big in afterglow, the kind of album that reminds you why the slow burn still matters.