Learning How To Be Kind with JULITH

Marking her debut EP, JULITH, aka Julia Pratt, sat down with Off The Record to talk everything from poetry, balancing life and music, and advocacy leading up to the release of This Is A Kindness.

Congratulations on the release of This Is A Kindness! This EP marks a creative rebirth for you including changing the name you perform under, what sparked this turning point in your career?

Thank you! I honestly think it was just through making the music, the project was recorded probably over the course of 4-6 months and it was such a transformative moment. My collaborators became really close friends and we went into this really intimate lane of story telling where I was just divulging a lot of information about myself that I had never really talked about before. I started to feel really empowered through the music and it gave me the courage to move forward from parts of my story that had been chaining me down. The music marked such a personal transformation that I felt like that needed to become external. I decided I needed to change my name and it just feels really right for this moment in my life and in my artistry. 

With such substantial change, how do you find the balance between your music and your personal life now? 

Oh it feels so much better! It feels so much more manageable, I feel like the name change has kind of given me permission to have more control and more freedom. Names hold so much power and performing under my government name for so long, I just felt like I’ve been Julia Pratt my whole life and that came with so much shit. Now I get to embody whatever I want with JULITH and that feels really exciting. It’s kind of given me separation of church and state which I'm loving. 

When listening to This Is A Kindness, what do you want people to take away, how do you want to leave them feeling? 

You know, I hope that it’s a mix of things. I hope that there’s some catharsis in there, I hope there’s some empowerment in there and I also hope that there’s a little bit of righteous anger. I’m talking about parts of my story that I’ve never really talked about before but these are things that are happening all around us, and speaking so openly about sexual abuse in particular, I hope that it does make people a little bit uncomfortable, uncomfortable enough to confront the parts of themselves that need to be confronted, and to see this perspective if they haven’t experienced it themselves, to feel more empathy for the people in their lives who have experienced this. I hope it kind of sparks a drive to care about other people more. I think those are the things I would like people to walk away with. 

You’re a very outspoken victim and survivor advocate, what is the writing process like for songs where you deal with some very difficult themes? 

I think there’s definitely a level of care that went into those more personal songs on the project. This Is A Kindness is such an interesting mix of songs, there’s some that are really free, and I'm cussing up a storm, I think there’s funny moments and just levity. I think those heavier songs put me back in a space where this has deep purpose to me so I was very intentional with my words when writing those songs. I hope that comes through when people listen, there’s a lot of intentionality, there’s a lot of thought behind those songs and hopefully that message is not minced. 

You originally began writing poetry which evolved into writing music, does this background influence the way you approach songwriting now? 

Yeah, I'm a flowery bitch [laughs], I love writing just like, word vomit and editing later. I just love beautiful imagery and I think that’s what poetry is for me, connecting imagery with physicality of words so when it comes to songwriting, I like to get kind of heady with it and then we can bring it back to the real world. I like to let that language speak for itself and then the melody comes in and the instrumentation comes in, it’s like a dance. I don’t know, it sounds so cheesy but I think that poetry really made me feel the art of writing 

Are there any specific poets or musicians that you consider influences on your work right now? 

In terms of musicians, I feel like Raye is absolutely just a poet, she’s such a poet and she’s been a huge influence on my songwriting. She’s so free with her words and she just paints in her music, so I feel like that’s been giving me a lot of inspiration to lean into that side of myself. I love artists like that, I’d say that she’s my number one inspo. 

For first time listeners, what three songs of yours would you want them to hear and why? 

I think when the EP is out, I would like people to start with “Monsters Out of Men”, kind of a heavier track but I feel like it gives so much insight to why I write the way that I do and why my artistry is the way that it is. Then I would say “Will She Won't She”, which is the first track on the EP, one of my favourites, I just think it has such a genre bending moment of its own so I would encourage people to listen to that one. And then “Pure Spite”, it’s one of my favourite songs I’ve ever made, there’s like a crazy metal moment at the end. I feel like those three songs capture my artistry at three very different points of the spectrum so those would be the three that I would lead people to. 

Anything upcoming you’d like to tease? What can listeners expect in the future? 

Yes, there is a lot of music on the way, one of my goals with JULITH as a project is just release really consistently cause I have a lot of music, so I’m giving myself permission to put that out into the world when it feels right, so there’s a lot more music on the way. Then there’s a lot more visuals on the way, I’ve been in my visual era so there will be multiple music videos for this EP that I’m really excited to share with everyone. 

Is there anything else you want to highlight, any parting words? 

I just want to say to everyone who listens to the project that I really encourage people to put themselves in a headspace and a physical environment that feels really safe when they do listen.  Maybe have someone to talk to afterwards cause I will say that there’s some heavy themes and some heavy emotions and sometimes I go into projects and I’m not thinking about that and then I just get slammed. I want to give a moment to tell people it is okay to reach out to others when you listen to this music if anything comes up and there’s a lot of resources online and in local communities and I would encourage people to explore, both for themselves and for the greater collective, I’d really encourage that.

Stream This Is A Kindness, out everywhere April 10.