Quiet Signs

Though earlier albums saw her crafting a strange otherworld, the perpetual sunset hinted at before is painted here in new dimensions, making this set of songs her best and easiest to revisit.

Teasing out musical abundance from simple instrumentation, lyrics, and vocals, Pratt concertizes complexity and nuance. Quiet Signs is a staggering work of hushed beauty.

While Jessica Pratt’s already-absorbing sound has been made fuller and richer on Quiet Signs, there’s still a charming simplicity to it all. And what do they say about simplicity? There’s a certain beauty in it. Here it’s ethereal and exquisite, with a magic that weaves its way into your being and transforms the world around you.

The nine songs here follow their own innate paths, often beginning with a simple acoustic arrangement before blossoming into vivid daydreams.

Pratt astutely portrays the hole that grows during a profound loss, the questions that emerge that can’t be answered. Quiet Signs offers solace in place of definitive resolution as it drifts by, able to capture so much with so little at play.

This is an album to sit with, to take in, and to fully appreciate its subtle and quiet beauty. It may not be her commercial breakthrough--someone as esoteric as Pratt could be waiting a while for that--but it’s certainly her best album to date.

The breathy blur of Pratt’s vocals give these tracks a will of the wisp quality, as you chase after the lyrics only to find yourself becalmed and beatific amid iridescent fog.

Whereas Pratt once settled on a colder and more reserved state, Quiet Signs manages to present a more empathetic side of her that was once concealed. It's still quaint by comparison, though, a delicately-crafted acoustic set that offers insight into her deepest fears and truths without letting us encroach into her private space.

There is something to be said about a record like Quiet Signs, which finds its maker willingly dwindle and fade within the corporeal world’s fog and decay. It may be an old fashioned idea, sure, but it’s one that will undoubtedly age well.

At the heart of Quiet Signs remains Jessica Pratt’s acquired taste of a voice and her penchant for dainty instrumental work, but the record’s palpable atmospherics might be enough to win over previous detractors.

Pratt’s voice is still gorgeously muffled and her words remain indecipherable at times. But while she may have once sounded fragile, here she is almost swaggering.

Quiet Signs, as sparse and subtle as its name suggests, shares its secrets only with those willing to give their complete and undivided attention in exchange.

Quiet Signs is a breeze of an album that somehow hits you like a ton of bricks. Just another enigmatic turn for Jessica Pratt.

Pratt doesn't recreate the lo-fi sound of her previous records so much as she elaborates on it. [Mar 2019, p.32]

Over and over again, Pratt hovers on the brink of revelation, yet Quiet Signs puts down a code, that, brilliantly, it's not quite possible to break. [Mar 2019, p.89]

Pratt has a very, very restrained way of supplying strength and relief during our hectic moment. Her songs are so quiet they almost don’t even exist, but maybe that’s how we need to feel for just a moment--like we’re just air.

The record’s nine songs clock in at just 28 minutes total, which feels just right, the samey-ness among songs playing as a strength, conjuring a mood and maintaining it, yet never feeling predictable, in part because it’s hard to get a bead on precisely what each song is about.

Not surprisingly, these songs float rather than soar as hints of organ, piano, and synthesizer augment the sparse sound without jarring the listener, lulled into Pratt’s ever so elusive world.

Pratt's tales of survival in "a world burning on the wild words" are sometimes elliptical but succeed in a cohesive telling from start to gauzy closer "Aeroplane."

It’s a quietly self-assured and immersive album that should mark out and reaffirm Pratt’s singularity.

If you’re looking for muted mystery, Jessica Pratt’s third album, as its title suggests, will enigmatically oblige.