Julia Jacklin Made The Gem Upstairs From a Melbourne Dive Bar
Julia Jacklin
The Gem is out today on 4AD. It is Julia Jacklin’s fourth album and her first for the label: ten songs in a little over 31 minutes, made upstairs from the Melbourne dive bar that gives the record its name.
It follows a hard stop. In 2025, Jacklin was out of contract with her label and without management for the first time since her early twenties, according to Uncut, after nearly a decade on what she describes as a career “treadmill” that kept her two days’ travel from home. She used the gap to try something new. She made a whole album at home.
A Bar, a Studio Upstairs and a Year to Get It Right
The Gem is a real place. Uncut describes it as the Melbourne dive bar where Jacklin, newly arrived from Sydney in 2017, would push herself out of her comfort zone and into conversations with strangers. Upstairs is the Rat Shack, a small recording studio, and that is where she spent a year working through the songs.
She co-produced the record with Robert Muinos, an old drinking buddy, and cut it with a close group of friends from the local scene: Jacob Diamond on guitar, Mimi Gilbert on bass and Jess Elwood on drums. Far Out’s review lists the production credit as Julia Jacklin and Robert Muinos, and the album carries a 2026 copyright to Jacklin under exclusive licence to 4AD.
The process did not run to plan. Used to making records in a few booked weeks, Jacklin expected the songs to come quickly, but some of the early material felt unsatisfying, Uncut reports. She kept working on opener “Brand New” and other songs with Muinos, then brought the band back into the studio almost a year later with what she calls a “reset nervous system”.
The bar downstairs became part of the method. According to Uncut, the four friends sometimes slipped down after sessions to try new songs on an unsuspecting crowd.
Songs About Home and the Road
The record is about the pull between a travelling career and a settled life. “If I Had The Hand Of God” is the clearest statement of it: a country rocker with a triple helping of electric guitars, in Uncut’s description, that sets small moments missed on tour, such as a missed call from a parent, against the myth of the touring musician.
“Brand New” opens the album unsettled, with home seen as if for the first time, and ends on a release: “I’m free now, let me be brand new.” “The Hardest Thing” portrays the end of a relationship, with Gilbert’s backing vocals coming in at key moments. “I Wish”, the closer, is a stripped-back letter to Jacklin’s younger self, sung with sisters Elsie and Maggie Rigby of The Maes.
Far Out singled out “Angel Vision” as a gentler moment that feels “joyously half asleep”, even as the lyric keeps returning to the tug between love and independence that the reviewer sees as Jacklin’s lifelong subject.
The Tracklist
The Gem runs to 31 minutes and 36 seconds across ten songs, according to its Bandcamp listing:
- Brand New (3:14)
- God Sometimes (3:41)
- If I Had The Hand Of God (2:41)
- The Hardest Thing (3:21)
- Angel Vision (3:41)
- Real Life (3:28)
- Get Away From Me (I Think I’ll Love You Soon) (2:48)
- You Turned On The Tap (2:59)
- Walk On Me (6:03)
- I Wish, featuring The Maes (3:00)
“Walk On Me” is the outlier on length. Uncut hears it expanding over six minutes from a sparse two-chord guitar riff into something that feels almost improvised, with the band filling the room.
What the Critics Heard
The early reviews agree on the record’s character, if not its ranking. Uncut calls it a homecoming and says Jacklin is not chasing reinvention: much of The Gem sits in the country-adjacent territory she has worked since the start of her career, without the doo-wop touches of 2019’s Crushing or the orchestral flourishes of her last album, Pre Pleasure. What stands out, the magazine says, is its looseness.
Both reviews picked the same standout. Uncut called “Get Away From Me (I Think I’ll Love You Soon)” the album’s funniest and most immediately infectious track, a jangle-pop rush that recalls the Melbourne bands of the 2010s, such as Twerps and Dick Diver, that drew Jacklin to the city in the first place. Far Out named it the standout track too.
Far Out’s headline sums up its view: “more of the same from a modern master”. The review argues that the familiarity works in the album’s favour, and that a signature sound and a familiar thesis imply sincerity, while leaving open “whether it’s Jacklin’s strongest collection”. It found the record warmest after a tentative opening, comparing it to a night at its namesake, where things get flowing after the first drink or two.
Why the Home Recording Matters
For an artist who spent most of a decade on the road, the setting is the story. The Gem swaps booked studio weeks for a year of slow work in a room above a bar, with players who are also friends. Uncut draws the link directly, reading the record as both a chronicle of uncertainty and a document of the support that gets someone through it.
The shift also changed how the songs were tested. Instead of finishing tracks in isolation and taking them on tour later, the band could walk downstairs and play new material to a bar crowd the same night. That feedback loop is unusual for a songwriter used to booked studio time, and Uncut hears its effect in the album’s looseness.
Other Australian acts are changing direction too. Earlier this month, IndieMusic.News reported that Amyl and the Sniffers went country in a Mexican restaurant.
The Band in the Room
The players shape the record as much as the setting. Uncut singles out “The Hardest Thing” and “Real Life” for a shared “barroom jam band deftness”, and credits drummer Jess Elwood with giving the songs momentum rather than weighing them down. Elwood has toured with fellow Melbourne artists Angie McMahon and Alex Lahey, both of whom, the magazine notes, owe a debt to Jacklin’s sound.
The long gap between sessions paid off in the guitars. By the time the band regrouped, Uncut says, “Brand New” had become messier and more liberated, with Jacob Diamond’s guitar tone carrying the rawness of the grunge bands Jacklin loved as a teenager.
Far Out heard the same muscle from a different angle, describing the instrumentation as freshly bulked up and ringing out like polished, sedate garage rock. It also noted that the title of “Get Away From Me (I Think I’ll Love You Soon)” reads like the premature inverse of “Don’t Know How To Keep Loving You”, one of her earlier songs.
The Run of Shows Ahead
Jacklin takes the record on the road next month. Her Bandcamp page lists a North American run opening on 20 October at the Observatory North Park in San Diego, followed by The Wiltern in Los Angeles on 22 October and two nights at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco on 23 and 24 October.
The run continues through Portland, Vancouver and Seattle in late October, First Avenue in Minneapolis on 13 November, the Riviera Theatre in Chicago on 14 November and the Danforth Music Hall in Toronto on 15 November, before reaching the Brooklyn Paramount on 19 November and Union Transfer in Philadelphia on 21 November. UK dates listed so far include Jacaranda Baltic in Liverpool on 30 November, Rough Trade Nottingham on 1 December, Birmingham Town Hall on 13 February and the Albert Hall in Manchester on 14 February.
After years of treating home as the place between tours, Julia Jacklin has made a record about staying put. The Gem is out now on vinyl, cassette and digital formats.
