''Crushing'' is the second

studio album An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...

by Australian singer-songwriter

Julia Jacklin Julia Jacklin (born 30 August 1990) is an Australian singer-songwriter from the Blue Mountains. Jacklin's musical style has been described as indie pop, indie folk, and alternative country. She has released three studio albums, ''Don't Let the ...

. It was released in February 2019 under

Polyvinyl Record Co. Polyvinyl Record Co. is an American independent record label headquartered in Champaign, Illinois. The label also has satellite offices in New York, Austin, and the Bay Area. Polyvinyl has put out over 400 releases to date. The Polyvinyl roster ...

Transgressive Records Transgressive Records is an independent record label based in London, formed in 2004. Its founders, Tim Dellow and Toby L, first met at a Bloc Party gig organised by Toby's Rockfeedback website. The label's debut release was "1am" by the Subwa ...

and

Liberation Records Liberation Records is an American record company based in the Los Angeles area known for do it yourself ethos and pioneering guerrilla marketing strategies. It was formed by then 16-year-old underground rock music fanzine publisher David Taba i ...

. At the

ARIA Music Awards of 2019 The ARIA Music Awards of 2019 are the 33rd Annual Australian Recording Industry Association Music Awards (generally known as ARIA Music Awards or simply The ARIAs) and consist of a series of awards, including the 2019 ARIA Artisan Awards, ARIA ...

, the album was nominated for six awards; Best Female Artist, Best Adult Contemporary Album, Best Independent Release,

Producer of the Year The Grammy Award for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical is an honor presented to record producers for quality non- classical music at the Grammy Awards, a ceremony that was established in 1958 and originally called the Gramophone Awards. Honors i ...

, Engineer of the Year and Best Cover Art. At the

AIR Awards of 2020 The 2020 AIR Awards was the fourteenth annual Australian Independent Record Labels Association Music Awards ceremony (generally known as the AIR Awards). It took place on 1 October 2020 in Adelaide. The nominations were revealed on 7 July 2020 ...

, the album won Best Independent Blues and Roots Album or EP.

Critical reception

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...

score of 85, based on 24 reviews. Helen Brown of ''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

'' gave the album a perfect score, calling it "Grunge-rinsed, feminist-flipped, upcycled Fifties guitar an' all: Crushing is a triumph".

Neil McCormick Neil McCormick (born 31 March 1961) is a British music journalist, author and broadcaster. He has been Chief Music Critic for ''The Daily Telegraph'' since 1996, and presented a music interview show for Vintage TV in the UK, Neil McCormick's Nee ...

of ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was fo ...

'' praised the album, giving it a perfect score and saying, "As a body of work, ''Crushing'' feels small, intimate and inward. But these are big songs, full of big ideas, from a big talent." Jonathan Bernstein of ''

Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first kno ...

'' described it as a "subdued yet arresting LP that blends sweet indie-pop with folk introspection and delicate piano balladry, as Jacklin offers up concise self-realizations without fuss or fanfare." Adriane Pontecorvo of ''

PopMatters ''PopMatters'' is an international online magazine of cultural criticism that covers aspects of popular culture. ''PopMatters'' publishes reviews, interviews, and essays on cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, fi ...

'' gave the album a positive review, saying, "Life, love, heartbreak: none of it is particularly novel as musical material, but on ''Crushing'', Julia Jacklin lets us learn from her experiences with her heart on her sleeve. There is a valuable perspective here, and truly moving music." In a year-end essay for ''

Slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...

'',

Ann Powers Ann K. Powers (born February 4, 1964) is an American writer and pop music critic. She is a music critic for NPR and a contributor at the ''Los Angeles Times'', where she was previously chief pop critic. She has also served as pop critic at ''The ...

cited ''Crushing'' as one of her favorite albums from 2019 and proof that the format is not dead but rather undergoing a "metamorphosis". She added that

concept album A concept album is an album whose tracks hold a larger purpose or meaning collectively than they do individually. This is typically achieved through a single central narrative or theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, or lyrical. Som ...

s had reemerged through the culturally-relevant autobiographical narratives of artists such as Jacklin, who "redefined the edges of intimacy within the singer-songwriter mode on ''Crushing'', which considers how women set boundaries and constantly face the violation of them, not just in love but in every aspect of their lives".

Track listing

Personnel

Credits adapted from liner notes. *

– vocals, guitar * Georgia Mulligan – backing vocals * Blain Cunneen – guitar * Dominic Rizzo – piano, assistant engineer * Clayton Allen – drums * Harry Fuller – bass guitar *

Burke Reid Burke Reid is an Australian–Canadian record producer/musician. Career After migrating from Canada to Australia in 1994 at the age of 14 years, Reid became one third of the band Gerling in 1997. Following the announcement of a hiatus by Gerli ...

– production, mixing, engineering * Guy Davie – mastering * Nick Mckk – photography * Mel Baxter – layout

Charts

References

2019 albums Polyvinyl Record Co. albums Transgressive Records albums Albums produced by Burke Reid Julia Jacklin albums {{2010s-album-stub