Sixty Summers

JULIA STONE / SIXTY SUMMERS - Recorded sporadically over five years from 2015 to 2019, Sixty Summers was shaped profoundly by Stones key collaborators on the album: Thomas Bartlett, aka Doveman, and Annie Clark, the Grammy-winning singer, songwriter and producer known as St. Vincent. Bartlett and Clark were the symbiotic pair Stone needed to realise her first pop vision. A wizard of production and songwriting, Bartlett helped coax Sixty Summers independent, elemental spirit from Stone, writing and recording over 50 demos with her at his studio in New York.

Itself a thoroughfare for indie rock luminaries, some of whom, such as The Nationals Matt Berninger and Bryce Dessner, ended up on the album, Bartletts studio was perfect fertile ground for Stones growth. Clark was the incisive yang to Bartletts yin, a sharp musical polymath who, when presented with the work Bartlett and Stone had made together, quickly helped fashion Sixty Summers into the album it was destined to be. Contributing vocals and guitar in addition to production, Clarks revered acidic touch ignited the sparks of Stones creations.

The scope of Sixty Summers is dizzyingly vast; miles away from Stones past work, it is a world unto itself, a surreal and breathtaking new landscape. Where Stones previous solo records, 2010s The Memory Machine and 2014s By The Horns, found her grappling with the natural darkness that comes with loving too much, Sixty Summers finds Stone claiming every part of herself: fire, fury, love, lust, longing. Touching on reference points as disparate as the avant-funk of Talking Heads (on Break) the romantic 2am musings of Serge Gainsbourg (Free, Dance) and the sleek, ecstatic synth work of Lordes Melodrama (Substance), Sixty Summers is an album you can dance to and one you can lose yourself in completely.

Julia Stone - Sixty Summers