Julia Pratt finds beauty and catharsis in darkness on her surreal, cinematic single Tried and True — showcasing today on Tinnitist.
Tried and True showcases Julia’s skilled vocal layering and otherworldly harmonies over a dense piano and synth backing. As with the striking cover artwork, Pratt’s creative vision is linked to the often-bizarre and obscure inner world of dreams and emotions.
“Tried and True was my attempt to articulate the internal monologue running through someone’s mind during their last moments,” Pratt explains. “I wanted it to sonically capture the feelings of desolation, longing, resignation, chaos, and exhaustion that can accompany a nervous breakdown. Lyrically I wanted to tell the story of someone trying to find the words to say goodbye to their loved ones, acknowledging the pain they’ve inflicted on those closest to them but still desperately wanting to explain themselves one last time. I wanted the background vocals to mimic how it feels to gasp for breath, and after I decided I wanted that to be the focal point of the song the story flowed from there.”
Pratt is a 21-year-old singer-songwriter in Philadelphia. She started singing as a teenager after a childhood of playing multiple instruments including cello and saxophone. After playing jazz saxophone for a few years, she decided that she wanted to begin singing the standards that she had been playing. Pratt began her singing journey by trying to emulate the sounds of her idols Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. She then set out to create her own songs that captured the delicate lyricism of jazz standards, but with her own modern sensibility. This endeavour culminated in the release of her EP Fallout in 2021.
In the process of producing Fallout, Pratt began to find her own artistic voice. While recording, she pinpointed vocal stacking as a facet of production allowed her to capture the emotionality she’d been longing to portray for a long time. With her upcoming music, she aims to express an even wider breadth of emotionality through her vocal production and songwriting. In 2022, Pratt plans to write and release new music both independently and in collaboration with other songwriters and producers, dipping her toes in different genres and finding her voice in all of them.
Check out Tried And True above, hear more from Julia Pratt below, and find her at her website, Facebook and Instagram.
