Julia Jacklin On Her New Album 'The Gem' & Feeling Like A Rock Star

Julia Jacklin is leaning into her rockstardom. It only took her 15 years. “I'm Australian so we don't have the American confidence culturally,” the singer-songwriter tells NYLON over a kale salad at Tiny’s and the Bar Upstairs. “It's been hard to shake that, but it's truly just believing that it's like you deserve to take up space. You deserve to be on the stage.”

It all clicked for her the night before, when she played a surprise show at Union Pool wearing heeled boots, fishnet tights, and perfectly tousled messy hair. “When I started, I would just wear T-shirts and jeans and be all like, ‘Sorry for being here.’ It takes a long time to get to the fishnets and boots and being like, ‘Hey, I've got glitter on my face and I deserve to be here and this is great.’”

This identity shift comes just in time for the release of her fourth studio album The Gem, out Sept. 25. The project is quintessentially Jacklin — contemplative, raw, and emotionally unrelenting — though the album’s recording process marked a first for the artist. In the past, she’s always “gone away from home to make records,” but this time, she wanted to stay in Melbourne, her home of 10 years. From there, she called up her friend Robert Muiños and got to work on her next record at Muiños’ Rat Shack studios, which just so happens to be situated between a hairdresser and tattoo parlor and located above a local pub called The Gem.

“I felt like it was important to stay and work in Australia with an Australian producer because there's this idea that you go to LA or London and work with some big hotshot,” Jacklin says. “That's kind of the trajectory of success or whatever. I wanted to not do that and resist that idea because it's not real. It's not a true thing.”

While Jacklin is used to working within a self-imposed time constraint of two to three weeks (“I worried that if I [made an album] at home over a period of time and was dipping back into my private life, my non-music life, that it would somehow make the album worse because I'd overthink it,” she says), being at home allowed her to craft the record over the span of a year and foster a sense of community in Melbourne. Whenever Jacklin and co. needed a break, they could venture downstairs and watch a local band play at the bar. And when they were almost finished with a song, everyone around them could sense it, too.

“Baz, the hairdresser [next door], would be listening to the mixes from down the hall and walk down and be like, ‘I reckon you're getting closer with this one.’ It just felt like everybody who works there was kind of part of it,” she says. “[The Gem] feels like such a Melbourne record now, which I really wanted it to feel like that.”

Of course, the best feedback comes from playing live, which is why Jacklin made sure to test out some tracks at The Gem during the recording process to get a sense of what’s working and what still needs improvement. A few of the songs never made it onto the album as a result, but that doesn’t mean she can’t revisit them in the future. “There's this one song that I thought was going to be the best song on this album,” Jacklin says. “To me, it was the greatest song I'd ever written. We recorded the song five times and I just could not get it. It was honestly one of the strangest experiences because I was like, ‘I know it's good, but why isn't this working?’”

“That's the beauty and difficulty in music. Sometimes you don't actually know why it's not working,” she continues. “I said to Rob, ‘It's going on the next record,’ and he was a bit like, ‘Leave it alone. We tried this five times.’ And I'm like, ‘No, I know it's good.’”

While she lets that song lie, she’ll be on tour, embracing the rock star life she was always meant to live — high-heeled boots, leather jackets, and all. “You have to play the part,” Jacklin says. “I think I can do it this time.”

Photographs by Jillian Giandurco