Julia Jacklin has released “I Was Neon” from her upcoming third album, PRE PLEASURE, along with a self-directed music video.
The song is definitive for the Australian singer-songwriter’s next collection and also one of the longest in development, as she shared in a statement: “I first wrote ‘I Was Neon’ for a band called Rattlesnack, a short-lived, much-loved 2019 side project that I played drums in. I rewrote it for my album in Montreal, during a time when I was desperately longing for a version of myself that I feared was gone forever. I was thinking of this song when I made the album cover, this song is the album cover really.”
“I Was Neon” makes for the perfect transitional track for Jacklin, who pushes the fear of losing her identity against the realization that she had already missed something so obvious about herself, despite thinking “I could see it all so clear.” The song’s unbreakable brightness, though, demonstrates her strong grasp of her own internal struggle and proves her ability to move forward and grow as an artist in spite of it.
The accompanying video, directed by Jacklin herself, finds the singer dressed in a long, gold-tinged gown with bright green evening gloves and matching eye shadow, eye-catching adornments, and guitar in hand as she bounds through the hallways of a suburban home. She nods to the album’s pop-icon-inspired sound when she swings into a bedroom that showcases a poster of Britney Spears’ cult classic film Crossroads, and then reveals her own inner desire to break free with interspersed shots of a less fussed-over Jacklin swinging over a creek and strolling in a field below a breathtaking sunset.
PRE PLEASURE arrives on August 26th via Polyvinyl. It was announced in May with the lead single “Lydia Wears a Cross” and follows Jacklin’s 2019 effort Crushing and her 2016 debut Don’t Let the Kids Win. Pre-orders are ongoing.
Jacklin has also laid a world tour starting in the fall that spans North America, the UK, and Europe and stretches into early December. She kicks off the trek first as part of Courtney Barnett’s “Here and There” touring festival in California on her album release day, August 26th. Grab your seats today via Ticketmaster.
