Amelia Jackie

“Southern Gothic, Bastard Out of Carolina, lesbian Americana.” - Cookie Hagendorf, She Shreds

 

"Jackie’s voice stretches and aches with a passion that is resoundingly human." - Patrick King, Ears to Feed

 

“...it was like someone was putting sound to feelings I didn’t know I had, or had buried so far down I’d convinced myself they weren’t there. Because what do the greatest singer-songwriters do if not show us the way to feeling?” - Cyrus Dunham, Them. Magazine

 

 

 

For the past several years, you were more likely to find Amelia Jackie’s music on a mix-tape in a rusted pickup truck than somewhere online, and her debut album “You Can’t Fuck the Internet,” beckons us into the sensual environments that spawned her, where the smell of sweet peaches meets the fumes of burnt diesel. With tracks that range from indie rock bops to country-inflected ballads, Jackie's lyrics reach across emotional landscapes from dysphoria to desire, grief to love, white leather to lace. 

Raised by a single mom and three sisters, Amelia Jackie spent most of her childhood moving around from place to place, a lifestyle that continued through adulthood until settling in to New York City. The record was produced and recorded with Robin MacMillan, in his apartment in Brooklyn. The two met working at a fried chicken restaurant in the lower east side when Jackie was 18 and have made music together ever since. “It was deep into summer in NYC and we kept having to turn off the loud AC and all the fans to record,” Jackie says. “I find recording to be a particularly suffering process, but adding to the discomfort only serves the narrative. To me the cherry on top of this record is Ava Jarden’s grimy electric guitar that they recorded in the middle of the afternoon in the middle of July, in my windowless garage in LA, with the door cranked shut. We ran an extension cord underneath the door but there was no light and no air conditioning. The weather that lives in the lyrics of the songs exists in the rooms we recorded it in.” The album was mastered by the illustrious sound engineer, Jade Payne (Aye Nako), who added “warmth and large darkness.”

The result is a wholly sumptuous atmosphere, with music that has a polish but still keeps intact Jackie’s raw performance style and authenticity. Marked by the thrill of her lazy drawl - tenuous crescendos that crack open to weep milky bathwater - we hear the consistency of the silk lining of an old suit, as its stitches are slowly ripped out. You’ll wonder whether she’s singing to a lover, grandmother, or that broken down truck. You'll want to sit down and smoke a cigarette with each character in every song. With a bewitching voice comparable to Margo Timmins of the Cowboy Junkies, and a lyrical sentiment which conjures Dorothy Alison or Carson McCullers, Jackie’s voice is the rough sugar at the bottom of the tea that’s almost too sweet to bear. It’s music that’s not concerned with pretense, but instead invites the listener to feel at home among her multitude of derelict beloveds. Mischievous, generous, and wild, Amelia Jackie shows us that the taller the tale, the truer it is.