Sweetbreads

Lily Too

Amelia Jackie

For the past several years, you were more likely to find Amelia Jackie’s music on a mix-tape in a rusted pickup truck than somewhere online, and her debut album, "You Can't Fuck The Internet," due out April 8, beckons us into the sensual environments that spawned her, where the smell of sweet peaches meets the fumes of burnt diesel. With tracks that range from indie rock bops to country-inflected ballads, Jackie's lyrics reach across emotional landscapes from dysphoria to desire, grief to love, white leather to lace.

Raised by a single mom and three sisters, Amelia Jackie spent most of her childhood moving around from place to place, a lifestyle that continued through adulthood until settling in to New York City. With a bewitching voice comparable to Margo Timmins of the Cowboy Junkies, and a lyrical sentiment which conjures Dorothy Alison or Carson McCullers, Jackie’s voice is the rough sugar at the bottom of the tea that’s almost too sweet to bear. Marked by the thrill of her lazy drawl - tenuous crescendos that crack open to weep milky bathwater - we hear the consistency of the silk lining of an old suit, as its stitches are slowly ripped out. You’ll wonder whether she’s singing to a lover, grandmother, or that broken down truck. It’s music that’s not concerned with pretense, but instead invites the listener to feel at home among her multitude of derelict beloveds. Mischievous, generous, and wild, Amelia Jackie shows us that the taller the tale, the truer it is.