“I want to love and be loved, but I also want to feel free. The tension between those two things has been the central question of my life,” says Julia Jacklin. It’s also the theme that underpins her fourth album The Gem. When Julia Jacklin first moved to Melbourne from Sydney in 2017, she discovered a little bar on a back street in Collingwood, where bands pushed dining tables to the side and set up in a corner on the floor. She didn’t really know anyone in town too well, but she knew she wanted to make the city her home, and so she started hanging out there, forcing herself out of her comfort zone. The pub was aptly named The Gem. Fast forward eight years, and Jacklin, with three celebrated solo records under her belt – Don’t Let the Kids Win (2016), Crushing (2019) and PRE PLEASURE (2022) – was looking to make a fourth. She’d been touring flat-out for years, had come out of contract with her record label, was looking for a new manager. “For the first time since I started out, I had this big chunk of time without any industry expectations and no-one to ask me what was going on,” she remembers. “It was liberating and it was scary.” Jacklin wanted to do things intentionally this time around. She wanted to back herself. And she wanted to make the record at home in Melbourne: something she’d never done before. So she called up her old drinking buddy Robert Muinos, owner of Rat Shack studios, which is located above her favourite old pub. For The Gem sessions she was also joined by longtime friends Jacob Diamond on guitar, Mimi Gilbert on bass, and Jess Elwood (Alex Lahey, Angie McMahon) on drums. She thought she’d smash out the new record in two weeks, like she’d always done – but that was not the case.   “The Gem felt like a metaphor for the whole process, because a lot of it did feel like digging. I felt like I was almost doing it in the dark, just trusting that I was going to find something,” says Jacklin of the record, which conjures images of excavation, of reinvention, of trusting your instincts and surrounding yourself with the people and things that make life worthwhile. It’s a soaring document of the songwriter’s journey back to herself. “I thought I’d finished the record a year before I actually did. It was mixed. It was mastered. We had a listening party. We celebrated. And two days later, I was like, It's not done. I realised that I had not yet healed from some things. I was trying to prove something. I could hear it in the music. I was making choices that I thought like, Somebody will like this, right? Without fully liking it myself.” Jacklin met up with Muinos and together they spent another eleven months tinkering in the studio, working until they arrived at something Jacklin could stand behind. Some tracks, like ‘Real Life’ and album opener ‘Brand New’,  have been totally reimagined. It’s an electric opener, a statement of intent, a song about deluding yourself into believing it’s possible to leave your former self behind. “I’m free, now let me be brand new,” trills Jacklin over Elwood’s compressed live drums and Diamond's chopped up country guitar line. It feels like the song is playing in-utero: an embodied, tactile dance music that winks and nods to Jacklin’s previous records while pushing towards rebirth.   “When you get to this phase of being an artist, people have an idea of what you are and the kind of musician you are and the kind of things you write about and the kind of ways you write about them. And then it's pretty difficult to not let that inform your own sense of self. It can get really weird, where you’re like, Is this what Julia Jacklin would do? And you’re like, Wait – I’m Julia Jacklin.”   ‘God Sometimes,’ with its driving rhythm section and images of flipped tables, is about choosing not to be a passenger in your own life, while ‘If I Had the Hand of God’ asks if it’s possible to be a touring musician and a good person at the same time. On ‘The Hardest Thing’, Jacklin mourns the end of a relationship. Sonically, it’s huge: total surrender.   Recording happened in close quarters, in converted hotel room accommodation upstairs at the pub, and sound bleed was a glorious constraint: foot traffic to the hairdresser and the tattoo parlour next door, loud music from the bands and the kitchen crew downstairs. Because it’s a working pub in a residential suburb, they couldn’t record late into the night for fear of bothering the neighbours. But all this came with unexpected delights. Jacklin and the band played two unannounced shows downstairs to try out the songs before recording them. “And if I needed a break from the sessions I would just go downstairs and watch the band playing,” says Jacklin. “There was something so beautifully cyclical about it.”   ‘Get Away from Me (I Think I’ll Love You Soon)’ is bright and big and fun: a nod to eighties jangle rock and to the Melbourne sound she fell in love with, while ‘Walk on Me’ swells and swells over six minutes, showcasing Jacklin in full flight. It’s a haunting track that reflects on a degrading relationship: “Walk on me if you like,” she sings, “Take off your shoes, turn off the light/ Don’t want anyone else to see/ What I let you do to me.”   For album closer ‘I Wish’, Jacklin teams up with siblings Elsie and Maggie Rigby of The Maes. It’s a lullaby penned for Jacklin’s younger self – a practice that after four albums has become a tradition. There’s images of juddering growth, of change, of a fledgling bird about to flee its nest as the three vocalists harmonise: “I got through, yeah I’ll be fine/ Still I wish someone had been there at the time.”   The band got matching tattoos on the last day of The Gem sessions: a neat little circle to represent an opal – Jacklin’s favourite gemstone. Fittingly, one of the bartenders at The Gem did it. “It did really feel like we’d done something special together. And I think as a group, it felt important to commemorate it. I’m glad we all have these little gems on us.”

“All of these songs hurt. This EP was an amalgamation of all these streams of consciousness that I, for the first time, really was sorting through to make it more concise. I wanted it to feel heavy and light at the same time.” Born in North Carolina and raised in the San Fernando Valley, Jordan Patterson has always operated from a place of radical honesty. Her debut album, The Hermit – a deeply personal document of solitude and self-examination that landed on The Fader‘s Top 50 Records of 2025 – announced her as one of the most distinctive new voices in recent memory. The 24-year-old singer, songwriter, and producer has already been hailed as “a generational talent” by Spotify and shared the stage with Cameron Winter. What really marks Patterson as an exceptional talent, however, is her totally uninhibited artistic expression and a piercing earnestness that defines her sonic palette. Songs from a Valley Girl, her latest EP and first release on Secretly Canadian, is what comes next: smaller in scope, more concentrated in feeling, and somehow even more unmistakably hers. Songs from a Valley Girl is unfettered and poignantly human. She yet again showcases her inimitable lyricism to reflect on the intersections between love, shame, rejection, and all of the contradictions that persist throughout the arc of the human experience. “The EP is as much of a shame-monster as it is a love-monster,” Jordan says. “There’s a lot of shame in this music, but it has served me. If shame is there for a reason, you know, it serves a greater purpose.” The project evidently draws its name from Patterson’s experience growing up in the San Fernando Valley. “There’s a line right where Burbank starts and trickles into the valley, and things shift and start to sprawl. You’re in a place that is not dissimilar but with this sense of spaciousness – more green, more parks, and craftsman homes that have been there for years and have allowed time to show its grace.” Patterson draws an affective line based on this phenomenon; there’s a line between history and repair, beauty and disgust, and claustrophobia and freedom. “This batch of music in particular feels like Sherman Oaks meets Van Nuys. That’s what this project feels like. It feels so inviting.” This sentiment of the valley mimics the central tension between shame and love that suffuses the entire EP. “The thing about shame is that, in being a monster, it wants you to come inside.” She reflects on the friction between the frivolity and intensity that imbued much of her adolescence in the valley, a friction that can only endure as all-consumingly as it does in the place you grew up. What is clear is that no matter what themes underscore Patterson’s lyricism, she is always in pursuit of truth. The first line of the album immediately strips listeners of their defenses: “I see your friends got a gun, but I’ve got love/how I long to disarm you.” She wrote “QDS” before the release of her last album, realizing how much humanity there was to exhibit within a period of intense darkness. “I found that, in that darkness, there was so much light that I could bring. Disarming people is a part of life – I use my weapon against yours. It’s not necessarily about winning; it’s more than that. That’s the whole purpose.” This phenomenon persists throughout the arc of the EP as she navigates the ambiguity of a relationship in “Just My Friend”, reflects on the impermanence of love in “Last”, meditates on themes of loss and renewal in “Cinderella”, and closes the record with a quiet devastation in “Win You”. Known for evoking catharsis through her distinct vocal style, Patterson’s voice is her greatest instrument. “I wanted my voice to occupy a very specific space in every song, and I wanted the low end to occupy the same thing.” Her vocals vivify the intense universal themes she conveys through her songwriting, as it is her unflinchingly raw singing style that makes her interior life so palpable to listeners. Pitchfork has noted that her singing seems “to exist entirely outside any lineage or explanation. Her singing almost seems to propose a new paradigm.” Patterson’s music is bolstered by her intensely soulful music partnerships. She worked closely with producer and long-time collaborator Eric Van Thyne on “Last”, “Win You”, and “Just My Friend”. “When it comes to working on music, he contains a clarity that is genuinely baffling at times,” Jordan states. The record also showcases some new faces such as John Debold (Vampire Weekend, Haim, Hozier) on “QDS”, Henry Kwapis (Dominic Fike, Dijon, Selena Gomez) on “Just My Friend”, as well as Parker and Marshall Mulherin on “Cinderella”. She worked closely with Kali Flanagan of Superfan on the EP, and she credits much of the meticulous craftsmanship of the project to his rigorous attention to detail. “He’s completely aware of what is happening. There’s no hiding with him, but it’s life-affirming; it’s like, oh, I’m alive.” Flanagan puts it plainly: “Jordan is an artist who is so visibly secure in her prowess and vision as a songwriter, producer, and collector, which makes collaboration feel like an open expanse and playground for me and her other contributors to run free.” She also collaborated with Clyde Crooks on “Last” and “Win You”, and he brings a ferocity to Jordan’s music that completely enhances the unfetteredness of the record. “The resistance that plagues most artists is simply not present in her. She was born free. This is evident the moment you enter her musical kingdom,” says Crooks. Along with Cameron Winter, Patterson has opened for musicians like Folk Bitch Trio, Jens Lekman, Open Mike Eagle, Racing Mount Pleasant, and Morgan Nagler. She has earned the cover of Spotify’s Fresh Finds and a weeklong feature on their Penn Plaza billboard. Her music has also been highlighted by New Music Friday, Lorem, Juniper, and Indie Editor’s Hyperfixations of 2025. She has also been featured in Rolling Stone, Talkhouse, The Guardian, Line of Best Fit, Stereogum,andNina Protocol. In support of Songs from a Valley Girl, she will be joining Searows on their near-sold-out US tour. Towards the end of the year, she will be heading to the UK for End of the Road Festival in Bristol and Pitchfork Paris and London. What is special about this record to Jordan? “I said exactly what I meant to say. I felt like I believed in myself. I had a lot of faith. I was like, if I’m gonna make this EP, it’s gonna be exactly what I meant to say.”