In a recent preview of single ‘Ghost Story‘, we detailed the origin tale of Jackie Cohen‘s third album, Pratfall. A brief yet formative moment involving a stranger’s pool and an unfortunate moth. “I was in the middle of this horrible personal crisis, and for the first time in my life I just asked the universe for a sign, some signal that everything was going to be okay,” Cohen explains of the event. But at that moment, a large moth swooped in and into the flame of a nearby oil lamp. “He just dive-bombed, self-immolated,” Cohen continues. “That was my message.”
The album, out now via Earth Libraries, sees Cohen take inspiration from the moth’s elegant and drastic act. A collection of songs which “proffers the value of giving oneself up to tension and turmoil rather than fighting against it,” as we wrote. To cease struggling in favour of decisive action, whatever the end result. Sitting at the centre of the record, ‘Ghost Story’ served the perfect example. A deceptively tender track detailing a different character in different circumstances, but one entirely informed by the moth. It’s a song Cohen describes as concerning “annihilation and acceptance,” ending up both “hopeless and serene.” Carrying a simple if challenging message. “If you wanna wake up, you’re gonna have to jump.”
we rubbed our elbows raw
we placed phone calls
I’m no genius, but I know when Rome fallssaid, “strike while it’s hot”
said, “I know I’m gettin’ burned here,
& if you never return, dear, well, at least there’s alcohol”
If the certainty of this epiphany is not undercut by the album’s title, then it is at least complicated. The pratfall, a staple of the slapstick routine, where the actor falls in a humiliating fashion. A physical act which blurs the line between comedy and violence. Jackie Cohen cites Meryl Streep as a maestro of the form. “When you see it, you gasp and hold your breath because it’s so violent that you worry it’s real. You want to look away but you can’t, not until she gets up,” she says. “And when she does finally jump up and say ‘tah-da,’ you’re so relieved that it was all just a bit that you burst out laughing.”
Pratfall exists within the beat between the act and the realisation. The split second before the brain has a chance to process the moment, where it is undecided whether pain or delight will follow. This porous line between injury and humour is central to Jackie Cohen’s songs, a certain playfulness persisting even into the record’s most serious or anxious moments, a wit perhaps born as much from shock or embarrassment as genuine mirth. An attempt at distraction, styling out, but also a confession. Because while the title track boasts of perfecting the pratfall technique, ‘Moonstruck’ offers a different view. “Well, I’ve had some trouble stickin’ my landin’ / So if you need someone to understand you / I understand.”
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The result is an album which feels rooted not in the wise retrospection of country music, nor the idyllic forward-facing dreams of indie pop, but the present moment. Songs unapologetically in the here and now, marked by reflexes and adrenaline rushes, the physical period before the brain can properly think. A mood captured in the opening track where the listener is pitched in alongside Cohen, listening to her reactions, pain and humour in real time.
why did you say
my name
so gently
like smoldering flame
all you wanna do
with you life
is cause me pain
it seems
ah ha
ah ha
ah ha ow
Pratfall is out now via Earth Libraries and you can get it from Bandcamp.
