Music news: Julia Jacklin announces new album The Gem with new single Get Away From Me (I Think I’ll Love You Soon)
Julia Jacklin has announced her new album “The Gem” alongside its lead single “Get Away From Me (I Think I’ll Love You Soon)”.
The 10-track record will be released on September 25 via 4AD.
The single introduces a project built around emotional tension rather than resolution, moving through a space where affection and doubt sit side by side, writes Music News Blitz’s Zinhle Radebe.
Light in its delivery but unsettled underneath, it lingers in the fragile distance between closeness and withdrawal.
Across the track, Jacklin leans into emotional uncertainty rather than clarity, treating feeling as something constantly shifting rather than fixed or resolved.
A new chapter for Julia Jacklin
Julia Jacklin is an Australian singer-songwriter from the Blue Mountains in New South Wales whose music moves between indie pop, folk, and alt-country.
Across “Don’t Let The Kids Win” (2016), “Crushing” (2019), and “Pre Pleasure” (2022), she has become known for writing that turns emotional detail into something restrained, precise, and quietly affecting.
With “The Gem”, she enters a new phase through 4AD, a label known for atmospheric and emotionally textured artists.
The pairing places her within a tradition where mood, space, and restraint are as important as lyrical content.
Unlike her earlier records, “The Gem” was developed slowly over a year at Rat Shack Studios in Melbourne between December 2024 and December 2025.
The space, a converted room above a pub, gives the album a lived-in quality that runs through its sound and atmosphere.
Love, freedom and emotional tension
At the centre of “The Gem” is a contradiction Jacklin has described simply: “I want to love and be loved, but I also want to be free.”
Rather than resolving that tension, the album remains inside it. Love here is not fixed but unstable, constantly shifting between closeness and distance.
That push and pull defines “Get Away From Me (I Think I’ll Love You Soon)”. Built on soft guitars and restrained production, the track feels gentle at first before revealing a quieter unease beneath.
Jacklin sings: “There’s no need to be sure / That this feeling will stay / I’m just trying to ready myself / For what’s coming my way.”
The set of lyrics captures a relationship with emotion that never fully settles, where affection exists alongside hesitation. It becomes a love song that resists resolution, moving between attraction and retreat without choosing either.
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Space, sound and control
Musically, “The Gem” opens into a more spacious sound compared to “Pre Pleasure”.
Jangle-influenced guitars, restrained percussion, and subtle layering allow each moment to breathe without pressure to resolve.
The album is co-produced by Jacklin and Robert Muinos, who also mixed and engineered the record.
Their collaboration favours intimacy over polish, keeping the recordings close and immediate rather than overly refined.
Recorded at Rat Shack Studios in Melbourne, the environment itself shapes the tone.
The space above a working pub gives the album a sense of proximity, where external atmosphere and internal emotion sit closely intertwined.
Digging in the dark
Reflecting on the album’s year-long creation, Jacklin said: “The Gem felt like a metaphor for the whole process, because a lot of it did feel like digging. I felt like I was doing it almost in the dark, just trusting I was going to find something.”
That slow, instinctive approach defines the record. Ideas are not presented as finished statements but allowed to form gradually over time.
Rather than resolving emotional uncertainty, “The Gem” stays with it, allowing it to remain open and unresolved.
Collaboration and place
The album is rooted in long-term collaboration with musicians Jacob Diamond, Mimi Gilbert, and Jess Elwood, whose contributions on guitar, bass, and drums create cohesion across the record.
Their familiarity brings a sense of shared instinct to the performances.
The title “The Gem” is taken from a small bar in Collingwood, Melbourne, grounding the album in a specific place.
That sense of location runs through the record, giving it a strong connection to lived experience rather than abstraction.
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Live shows and what comes next
Alongside the album, Jacklin will take “The Gem” on a major international tour across North America, the United Kingdom, and Europe.
It marks one of her largest touring cycles to date, though the focus remains firmly on intimacy over scale.
Before the official announcement, she previewed material through in-store performances across the UK and Ireland, including Dublin, Brighton, London, Liverpool, and Nottingham.
These shows reflected the tone of the album, favouring closeness and direct connection over spectacle.
Rather than expanding the record’s world, the live shows extend it.
Early reaction and anticipation
Although “The Gem” has not yet been released, early response to “Get Away From Me (I Think I’ll Love You Soon)” points to another understated and emotionally precise entry in Jacklin’s catalogue.
The track has been received as simple in structure but layered in feeling.
Following the success of “Pre Pleasure”, anticipation is already high, with “The Gem” emerging as one of the most anticipated indie releases of 2026.
Her move to 4AD further strengthens that positioning, placing her alongside artists known for restraint, atmosphere, and emotional precision.
Final word
“The Gem” does not attempt to resolve Julia Jacklin’s emotional world. Instead, it narrows its focus and stays with uncertainty at every turn.
Love, distance, clarity, confusion, and desire all coexist without being pushed into resolution. The album does not move toward answers.
Where earlier records worked towards understanding, this one remains in motion, holding emotion as something unfinished and ongoing.
It does not arrive at certainty. It lingers.
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