As a musician, Jessica Pratt is an enigma. She's a thirtysomething, slight folk singer who grew up on '80s cowpunk like X and the Gun Club. She's a wistful lyricist who blends her syllables together in a way that would make Kurt Cobain scratch his head. And on her third album, she's created her most musically ambitious piece of work and it also happens to be her most simple.
Beginning with a pair of brief piano tunes, the instrumental "Opening Night" and its vocal-tinged companion "As the World Turns," Pratt subsequently slides into an additional seven tracks that find the L.A. musician stretching her fizzy vocals underneath a tapestry of tasteful woodwinds, organ and of course, Pratt's full-bodied folk picking and strumming.
While Pratt's first two albums were recorded in her home, Quiet Signs was finished in a studio with help from Oneohtrix Point Never and Autre ne Veut producer Al Carlson. But each track still contains an air of tape hiss and a four-track feel to it, only strengthening to Pratt's haunted delivery.