“Sometimes I pray for the rain,” Jessica Pratt wistfully admits in the first line of “Back, Baby”, one of the many highlights on her excellent folk record, On Your Own Love Again. That headspace is one that we’ve all occupied before, in the kind of self indulgent bad mood where you sort of hope things will actually just get worse for the sheer poeticism of it. It certainly isn’t constructive but in it’s own way can be a fulfilling catharsis.
Though delivered in pretty coos, with double tracked vocals, “Back, Baby” is a devastating elegy for a relationship that was always, tragically, one sided. But even still, Pratt gladly invites the rain from the thunderstorm that was her doomed relationship, even if it is ultimately a form of self-immolation.
I recommend this track, and honestly this entire album, but would advise you wait for that perfectly annoyed headspace, maybe after you’ve had to trudge through a blizzard on your way back home from work. It will help you unwind but won’t necessarily relax you. Weird, right?