LA’s Jessica Pratt is all soft and gooey in Wellington
Los Angeles artist Jessica Pratt’s show brought a quiet tenderness to a chilly Meow Nui in wintery Wellington on Tuesday.
In front of a decent-size gathering of arty student looking types and older couples, a rugged up room, and similarly rugged up Jessica Pratt, went about it with her band.
“Sometimes I pray for the rain,” Pratt sings to introduce 'Baby Back' — which sounds especially like our very own Aldous Harding.
A gentle acoustic groove runs gently through all the music Pratt and company perform in the former chapel. It’s sparse, melodic, and almost timeless.
Related stories:
It’s music to transport you to a bygone era but with a modern twist. Whilst enjoying the folksy-type music, the light of somebody’s phone is so bright you can see they have one Goodreads notification. You’re then transported back to the present day.
On stage, drummer Riley Fleck gently shakes and rattles but never goes hard and with Diego Herrera’s saxophone and Nico Liebman on bass it all sounds all Joni Mitchell in the best way possible.
Pratt’s partner and collaborator Matt McDermott provided the synthesised sounds — looking flash in his Clark Griswold/Miami Vice crossover get up.
Both support act, Lylttleton’s Ben Woods, and Pratt's crew looked austere with their instruments set up on a big rug littered with instruments, recording devices and office chairs.
'Get Your Head Out' drifts solemnly by with its playful array of drum sounds.
Pratt is hesitant about being pigeonholed by genre but the company she keeps lends knowledge. For instance, saxophonist, Herrra, produces extremely chill electronic music under the moniker Suzanne Kraft, releasing music on European record labels Running Back and Rush Hour in Germany and The Netherlands along the way.
'Better Hate', performed live, is a quiet groover which could soundtrack an Ibizian or Adriatic sunset or the last moments of a dying party.
Pratt has referenced Bossa Nova artists as influences but at times it’s straight-up folk and other times chill-out-room-downtempo psychedelic folk.
Along the way, I spot friends who are lost in the moment dancing to a song which must be a mutual favourite.
'The Last Year', the closing track on Here Is The Pitch, released in 2024, concludes with a disarmingly quiet crescendo and a smattering of applause.
On Instagram, Pratt said these New Zealand shows are the furthest south they’ve ever been “on this mysterious globe” and that they're “ready to play the misty kingdom".
The gig is short - approximately seven minutes short of an hour and we're left wanting more.
Upstairs on the mezzanine, where the wristband “VIP entry” is candle-lit, there are dozens of piled-up old radios from the early to mid 20th century serving as a reminder of the original Meow venue on Edwards Street.
The list of overseas artists I’d love to see perform in this space would be quite lengthy, but the calendar sadly looks fairly bare in the upcoming months.
This was the penultimate show of their ten-stop Australia and New Zealand jaunt. Jessica Pratt performs tonight at the Bruce Mason Centre in Auckland.
