Album Review of Quiet Signs – Jessica Pratt

BY NEAL MARTIN | FEBRUARY 28, 2019

As a teenager learning about modern music, I stumbled upon Nick Drake whose seminal early seventies albums such as Bryter Later and Pink Moon are rightly revered as high points of English folk, even though they sold poorly at the time. I have always been drawn to this genre of music. Even though I never listened to it at the time as I was too busy imagining myself in Star Wars, somehow English folk like Fairport Convention, Nick Drake or John Martyn, evokes memories of my childhood. Maybe that is what draws me to Jessica Pratt’s masterful third album, Quiet Signs, which is perverse since the singer was born in San Francisco and now resides in Los Angeles. And yet over the last few days with Quiet Signs on constant rotation, I cannot help but think of Pratt as being some kindred spirit of Drake, and by that I am not referring to the Canadian rapper with the funny dance moves.