The debut album from Julia Jacklin was trailed by an ear-catching single called Coming of Age, in which Jacklin, over cheerily grungey backing, announced: “I gotta find myself a girl / Who makes my straight toes curl.” It proved to be a bit of a red herring, because this isn’t a straightahead indie-rock album: the instrumentation is often sparse, and the mood subdued. But the themes of Coming of Age – seizing the possibilities of life, and the consequences of growing older (albeit from the perspective of a 25-year-old, rather than someone confronting mortality) run through her impressive debut album. Its quirks are charming, rather than irritating: on Small Talk, a waltz, she imagines Zach Braff as her dad (“But you’re too young to be / A father to me”) and Catherine Deneuve as her mother (“Oh what a life, just you and I / Learning to walk whilst you read your lines”).
Don’t Let the Kids Win feels very much like one of those albums that will slowly creep into the affections of a large number of people; it’s that lovely.
