‘I’d feel ill after interviews because I said too much’: How Julia Jacklin eased into her new gem

It’s very possible Julia Jacklin has watched Looking For Alibrandi more than any other person in the world. While crammed in a small Collingwood studio making her fourth album The Gem, Jacklin and producer Robert Muinos would sit and fiddle with recordings while Pia Miranda’s Josephine Alibrandi flitted on a TV screen stuck near the mixing desk.

“I would be scared to know how many times we watched [that film],” Jacklin says with a smile, sipping tea in a hotel lobby bar in Sydney’s Surry Hills.

Serendipitously, the film played in cinemas as part of its 25th anniversary celebrations while the band was recording; Jacklin and Muinos went to a screening and snapped a photo with actor Kick Gurry, who played Alibrandi’s love interest Jacob Coote.

“I never ask people for photos,” Jacklin laughs. “He was in the bar area, and I was like ‘I have to get a photo’. I’ve seen that movie a thousand times, and it’s a perfect movie … We either watched that or The Muppet Christmas Carol.”

If recording for The Gem sounds low-key, that’s because it was. After three acclaimed records recorded in various studios around the world – Don’t Let the Kids Win (2016), Crushing (2019), and Pre Pleasure (2022) – Jacklin wanted to embed herself in her beloved Melbourne, which she’s called home since moving from Sydney in 2017.

Jacklin, one of Australia’s most celebrated contemporary songwriters, was also out of contract with her label for the first time in her career, allowing her precious time to look around and find a place to whittle away at a new record. She settled on a pub called The Gem.

Located in Collingwood, The Gem is a local institution filled with quirky decor and a devoted local crew who will pile in to push the furniture against the walls so bands can play in the corner. When Jacklin first moved to the city, she became a regular.

Handily, Muinos’ Rat Shack studio is right above The Gem, a small but mighty space with a piano packed in the old laundry and a constant drip coming from the ceiling. Jacklin completely loved it.

“We had to ask the kitchen staff if they wouldn’t mind turning down the radio when we were doing a vocal take,” Jacklin says. “We had to think about the neighbours if we were going to do a drum take. We had to just ask people not to walk down the hall [sometimes] … It was really tight. Some of my most favourite memories of recording music are from that little room, just all playing together.”

The ramshackle room also afforded Jacklin the environment to make the album she truly wanted to make. Her last album, Pre Pleasure, was a rich mix of orchestral and electronic elements. For The Gem, she wanted to strip back those elements and pursue something lo-fi, like some of her favourite records by Gillian Welch and Emmylou Harris.

“Sometimes you can get into this headspace of like, ‘Oh, but I’m not allowed to make a record like that’,” she says. “That ‘I’m not good enough to do something that’s lo-fi.’ It’s hard to explain… I love Pre Pleasure, but I thought I had to elevate the production so it was a very different process. Whereas with this one, I allowed myself to make something that I actually enjoy listening to and gave myself the permission to not feel like I needed each record to go up in production standards.”

It was also the longest time Jacklin has spent recording an album, stretching over a year and a half. She would turn up to the studio – waving hello to the hairdresser and tattooist that also worked above the pub – and get to work. “It felt like I was in the world while making music instead of tucked away in a hidden studio, which is usually how it goes,” she says.

The Gem sounds alive and live, like you’re hanging in that cramped laundry while someone hammers on the piano right next to you. There are lovely intrusions of the outside world – some street noise and sirens waft through the mic on certain tracks – and each instrument feels physical and near; you hear the scratches of nails on guitar strings and fretboards, you hear the full reaches of Jacklin’s distinctive, warm voice.

Lyrically, Jacklin has dug deeper into her constant study of love and relationships, how they can support and clash with personal liberation. God, or the idea of an omnipotent being (another lifelong theme throughout her work), is also present on The Gem.

“My use of God is not in any way tied to a Christian God,” she says, slowly picking her way through her sentences. “On this record in particular, I think I’m using God as a metaphor for having the ability to have more knowledge and power than I can have as a human being with my two feet on earth … and feeling so frustrated by the limitations of that.

“In particular,” she continues, “If I Had the Hand of God is about how intense this job can be and how much it takes me away from my family, my life at home, for a majority of my adult life. Because it’s all-encompassing when you’re doing it … It’s truly just very relentless.

‘I was actually talking to people in my life through interviews. You’re just desperately trying to be understood.’

“An album cycle can last for two years. As you get older, you can come out of a two-year album cycle and be like, ‘Oh my God, this person had a baby. This person’s been really struggling with something, but they didn’t tell me about it because they didn’t want to stress me out because I’m doing this’.

“I’ve gotten better at it, but I have found it quite difficult to do this work that I do feel services people in many ways. I do believe that I’m doing something good with my life, and I am communicating with people and helping myself and therefore others feel. But it means that you also can’t be the best person at home, which I’ve always struggled with.”

We’re meeting in the middle of a busy promotion schedule for The Gem. Jacklin would be the first to admit she’s not necessarily comfortable with press and promotion – particularly during this album cycle when nearly every interview is filmed and clipped to become short-form content. The somewhat grim reality of having to sell a product – herself and her work – weighs on her mind.

But certain things have become easier over the years. “I think when I was younger, I was so desperate to be understood,” she says. “So then sometimes the press cycle would actually seem like this way to talk about myself. If I was being really honest, I think a lot of the time I was actually talking to people in my life through interviews. You’re just desperately trying to be understood constantly … I used to feel ill [after interviews] because I would’ve said too much, I would’ve given too much away, because it felt good in the moment.

“The thing is I love music journalism,” she continues a bit later on. “I’m genuinely so passionate about it and I’m not one of those people that talk shit about Pitchfork, for example … I love that people take what we do seriously enough to write about it and to interrogate it. That’s the biggest compliment and it’s such an important part of such a symbiotic relationship of art.”

Aside from a new album, 2026 also marks the 10-year anniversary of Jacklin’s debut album, Don’t Let The Kids Win. It’s been on her mind today, in fact, while driving past her old school and university.

“I played [the title track] recently and one of the verses choked me up that used to not choke me up,” she says, smiling. “Things have happened in my life since I wrote it that made one of the things I was talking about feel a lot more intense … I don’t think I even fully understood it, but I was able to articulate that you never get used to time passing. If you brace against time, your life is just so much harder. You just have to relax in whatever way you can.”

Julia Jacklin’s The Gem is out now. Jacklin performs at the album’s namesake, The Gem in Collingwood in Melbourne, on Saturday and Sunday.

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