Jessica Pratt, Kevin Morby

"To say that Jessica Pratt is an old soul would be a vast understatement," says Jenn Pelly of Pitchfork. "The young San Francisco singer/songwriter's deeply intimate folk sounds so sincerely cast in from the 1960s that it's hard to believe she didn't release a proper LP during that period of time." Pratt's spooky and seductive self-titled debut is the inaugural release on Tim (White Fence) Presley's new imprint, Birth Records. "I never wanted to start a label," Presley says, "but there issomething about her voice I couldn't let go of."

Pratt's debut release includes recordings from over the last five years, and steady advances in sophistication of recording and melody are evident throughout. To the artist, the record is a time-lapse document of discovery, both musical and personal. But in strangers' hands, Pratt's debut is another kind of discovery altogether. A fully-formed emerald artifact dug up cobwebby and cold but no less green for its time spent buried. Sun-bleached and sounding a thousand years old, Pratt's debut is arrestingly brand dazzling new, and watch how the lights in your living room go soft and yellow when you put it on."

Harlem River marks the solo debut of songwriter Kevin Morby. Known for his work as the singer/guitarist for the Brooklyn band The Babies and bassist for Woods, the Kansas City native and new Los Angeles resident, calls the record "an homage to New York City," his adopted home for the past five years.
Harlem River features eight interweaving tales of tragedy and misfortune; a series of desperate characters playing out their dramas with the city as backdrop. A departure from some of the signature sounds of his better known projects, Morby's songs glisten with a haunting intimacy and while he maintains that the songs are stories about other people, it's hard not to feel a piece of him in each one; a half-imagined, half-painfully personal world of lost love, addiction, violence and prayers for the departed.
The album was recorded in Los Angeles in February and March of '13 with producer Rob Barbato who recorded The Babies' second album, Our House On The Hill, and whose guitar and bass work figure prominently on Harlem River. The album also features drummer Justin Sullivan (The Babies) as well as contributions from Will Canzoneri, Tim Presley (White Fence), Dan Lead, and Cate Le Bon.