When her second full-length album Crushing came out earlier this year, we watched Julia Jacklin continue to evolve as an artist from 2016’s Don’t Let the Kids Win. Her voice as a songwriter, and confidence as a performer seemed to grow stronger; her perspective more self-assured. Even as the songs on Crushing find her still questioning everything, she’s coming from a mature place of knowing who she is and how resilient she can be. This comes across in her live shows through her warm sense of humor, her words to the audience like little beams of light between songs that can be gut-wrenchingly sad. It was particularly noticeable in her laid back demeanor at Brooklyn’s Warsaw on November 8th.
Similar to her recent Bowery Ballroom show a few months ago, the audience sang along to every chorus, anticipated every song that would come next in the set, excitedly turning to each other and saying, “’Pool Party?!’” This comradery at a Julia Jacklin show feels something like sisterhood, with friends crying to each other as they mouth the words to “Don’t Know How to Keep Loving You,” and headbanging in time with each other to “Pressure to Party.” Jacklin, at one point, shared the anecdote that each member of her all-male band shares a member with her three closest female family members, her mother and two sisters.
Standouts in the set included the somber “Body” and “Turn Me Down,” both off Crushing. And crowd favorite “Leadlight,” and “Don’t Let the Kids Win” off the album with the same name. But no one could have prepared the room for her final song of the night, a cover of Avril Lavigne’s “I’m With You,” a power ballad off her beloved 2002 record Let Go. Jacklin, like so many in the audience, likely found such an album formative as she came of age, and that came through in her committed performance of this forgotten gem of a song.
To listen to Julia Jacklin’s songs is to hear your deepest, darkest thoughts sung out in the most angelic, pure of voices. Jacklin’s ability to capture that extra specific anxiety of being a young woman is uncanny and, from the looks of the packed rooms she’s played to on her latest tour, extremely relatable. People of all ages, but especially other young women, seem to connect with Jacklin’s lyrics about questioning her readiness for motherhood, for leaving a totally fine but unfulfilling relationship, for having agency over her body and sexuality. Perhaps it’s because of the devastating beauty and sincerity of Jacklin’s delivery, but maybe even more significantly, it is because her fans see themselves reflected in her words. Jacklin holds a mirror up to us, exposing our insecurities, uncertainties and humiliations, but she does it in a way that doesn’t leave us feeling ashamed. It leaves us feeling seen and understood.
