THE WORLD'S BEST NEW MUSIC

As she recounts on her home page, when Jacklin first moved to Melbourne from Sydney in 2017, she discovered a little bar on a back street in the inner city suburb of Collingwood, where bands pushed dining tables to the side and set up in a corner on the floor. She didn’t know anyone in town but knew she wanted to make the city her home, so she started hanging out there, forcing herself out of her comfort zone. The pub was named The Gem. She recalls that eight years later, with three celebrated solo records under her belt - Don’t Let The Kids Win (2016), Crushing (2019), and PRE PLEASURE (2022) - she was looking to make a fourth. With time on her hands – she was out of contract with her record label, was searching for a manager – she decided to make the record at home in Melbourne, something she’d never done before. She called up an old drinking buddy Robert Muinos, owner of Rat Shack studios, which is located above The Gem, and brought in friends Jacob Diamond (guitar), Mimi Gilbert (bass), and Jess Elwood (drums). Recording happened in close quarters, in converted hotel room accommodation upstairs at the pub. The result is another superior serving of collaborative musicianship and songwriting, filled with songs of forgiveness, self-determination, courage, detachment and trust. “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 Jacklin. It’s also the theme that underpins The Gem.