Julia Jacklin wants to be loved, but also wants to be left alone. Her fourth album delves deeper into this dichotomy, a tension that runs through all of her work. In ‘Head Alone’, one of the most powerful songs on the Crushing record, the Australian singer‑songwriter asserts her space within a relationship in a chorus where she raises her voice: “I don’t want to be touched all the time / I raise my body so that it is mine.” In ‘I Was Neon’, from her previous album PRE PLEASURE, she asks with a tremor: “Am I going to get lost again? / I really like the person I am.”
These are just two examples of a theme that has always preoccupied the singer. How can the boundaries between one person and another remain clear in a relationship? How to stay independent without succumbing to devastating loneliness? ‘The Gem’ again probes these questions with Jacklin’s usual ability to turn them into small indie‑rock anthems that are as catchy as they are profound.
‘Brand New’ is, as its title suggests, an attempt to erase the slate and start anew. Following a painful experience, Jacklin experiments with pretending to forget everything in order to begin again. “I’m free now, let me be completely new,” she repeats like a mantra over a drum pattern and a bass line. The reinvention the singer seeks is not only in the lyrics but also in the music, where she leaves behind her confessional style and adopts a more atmospheric and abstract production. Between the tension created by the instrumentation and the repetition of the same phrase, an acoustic guitar with a country edge bursts in.
After this introduction, Jacklin returns to more familiar ground with tracks that settle into her characteristic indie‑rock guitar sound, such as ‘God Sometimes’ or ‘If I Had the Hand of God’, suggestively sequenced one after another. If in the first she advocates for taking charge to change her fate, in the second she mournfully concedes that there are certain things one simply has to accept. Once again the theme of losing freedom surfaces, though this time not from a romantic relationship but from her own musical career—successful yet sometimes unsatisfying, with which she feels she cannot pause for a moment without risking oblivion: “Will the circle stay unbroken if I step away for a while? / What kind of life is this? / After the show you become a sketch to all you know.”
‘The Hardest Thing’ rests on luminous riffs that evoke 90s pop‑rock and depicts a moment of doubt in a relationship: “The hardest thing to do is believe you when you say you love me / The hardest thing to do is keep trying to convince you.”
In a similar vein, ‘Get Away From Me (I Think I’ll Love You Soon)’ provides the project’s most lively and catchy production, where Jacklin lays out her desire to be with someone and feel loved despite her own nature, which resists letting go.
The tempo shifts in ballads such as ‘You Turned On the Tap’ or the moving ‘Angel Vision’, where the album’s central theme remains (“How can I feel free with someone watching me?”) and the singer’s powerful voice shines in the minimalist arrangement, with only a few guitar licks and vocal harmonies.
‘The Gem’ culminates in two grand compositions. ‘Walk On Me’ is the album’s most emotional moment, where Jacklin begins telling, with measured calm, the loneliness she feels in a relationship. Gradually, the production introduces elements until reaching an epic climax in which she vents her frustration. While ‘I Wish’, performed with The Maes, closes the album with a folk ballad in which the artist’s voice achieves intense expressiveness, letting a ray of hope slip into the melancholy melody. “The days were turning black / I didn’t think the light would return / until it did, little by little,” she sings, raising her voice an octave. And in that brief moment, all the darkness of the record cracks.
