Jessica Pratt: Live at Bush Hall, London

A few minutes walk from Shepherds Bush tube station lies Bush Hall: an independent music venue built over 100 years ago, originally intended as a dance hall. Entering the main atrium, you can see from the plush carpets, curtains and chandeliers that the space has kept a certain sense of surreal grandeur. At almost half capacity, a widely varied audience lounges around the large space sipping over-priced locally brewed beers, and there’s an unusually casual atmosphere that many artists would perhaps find hard to harness.

Framed by hanging red velvet and concealed under a mane of dirty blonde hair, Jessica Pratt’s initial attempts at audience engagement are almost comically quiet and as awkward as a teenage first date. Yet all is forgotten as soon as she begins to drift her way through her own unique mix of psychedelic 60’s ‘freak’ folk (a label she reputedly dislikes – apologies!) with only an acoustic guitar and support from Cyrus Gengras on electric guitar. It soon becomes clear that the eccentric surroundings add to the can’t-quite-put-your-finger-on-it mystique Pratt commands as a performer.

Simultaneously sounding like a young child and an elderly woman singing English folk from the last century

Although mostly soft and understated, a first time listener will be shocked to hear Pratt’s voice, which seems to exist outside the conventional realm of human vocal tone, simultaneously sounding like a young child and an elderly woman singing English folk from the last century, despite Pratt herself hailing from the west coast of the U.S. As someone who’s only heard her on record before, I was sceptical as to how much of her dream-like singing was the result of studio manipulation. Yet Pratt is able to perfectly reproduce her unique style of rapidly sliding from bird-song highs to watery depths, which genuinely give the impression of some kind of studio after-effects.

Of course, her voice is not Jessica Pratt’s only appeal. Fresh off the release of On Your Own Love Again – an album lauded by Pitchfork and Q magazine as one of the best-kept secrets of 2015 – her sophomore effort, like her first, is a collection of unearthly, poetic songs that subtly shift through unusual harmonic patterns. Although as a two-man band the set is notably lacking the expanded use of instrumentation that marks the latest album apart from her eponymous first, the set up works to create the delicate waves of sound which cushion Pratt’s ethereal vocals. The mesmerising quality of the final sound on songs such as ‘Night Faces’ and ‘Greycedes’ has much of the audience deciding to sit or lie down with their eyes closed, but this just seems fitting with sense of Pratt’s performance.

Her sophomore effort is a collection of unearthly, poetic songs that subtly shift through unusual harmonic patterns

Despite the singer’s admission that she’s “…a little bit ill” (it sometimes feels like that’s a required saying for all live artists these days), her song-writing’s main strength – the lyrical prowess – still comes across powerfully. Jessica’s hallmark investigation of a yearning, retrospective look at pain and loss is best seen in lead single and principal “Hey I know some of the words to this one!” number ‘Back Baby’. To Pratt time is a “glass world” and a “frozen thing/ It encloses you in its crystalline/Look so lovely but you’ll have to decide/ That you’d better reconsider all the love you took and then cast aside”; delicate imagery that’s mimicked by the gentle interplay between Pratt and Gengras, and some perhaps not so delicate accompaniment from members of the audience which luckily soon dies down.  After her brief encore Pratt tells the audience “I’ve played in London before and every time it’s special”, and as they amble out of the hall with one foot still in Pratt’s dreamy sonic world, this time is no exception.