Josaleigh Pollett thrives on collaboration. After the Salt Lake City-based songwriter and musician released their debut album Strangers in 2017, they met future creative partner and best friend Jordan Watko (Crowd Shy). They worked on two records together: No Woman Is the Sea (2019) and In the Garden, By the Weeds (2023), the latter a home recording created during the pandemic when Pollett and Watko were roommates. Watko eventually relocated to Japan, at which point Pollett worked with artists like Ekko Astral, phoneswithchords, and Icarus Phoenix. Still, the vastness of the Pacific Ocean couldn’t keep Pollett and Watko from making more music together: If I Let It Quiet is their exceptionally lovable new project, created despite the distance of several thousand miles.
Pollett and Watko work with co-producer, engineer, and mixer Andrew Goldring, who also contributes guitar, drums, and vocals here and there (along with drummer Ken Vallejos and cellist Hal Jean). Goldring’s presence is certainly helpful to “close any gaps between oceans”, according to the press release, and the extra set of hands lets Pollett and Watko focus on their unique brand of intimate, cracked bedroom pop. The production is often beautifully messy, mixing the synthetic with the organic, but framed by top-shelf songwriting and performances. Imagine a home recording take on Wilco‘s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and you’re in the general vicinity of this gorgeous, beguiling album.
While the opening track, “Shed Piano, Birds”, is a brief, curious experimental field recording, it serves as an idiosyncratic overture to ease in the listener, sliding effortlessly into “Cherry,” as synths and acoustic guitar accompany Pollett. The chorus—”The blood’s not blood / It’s the juice from a cherry / And it hurt my mouth / Sucking stones, spitting empty”—sees Pollett offering both unvarnished honesty and a unique way with words.
While “Cherry” comes off as a moody, eloquent tone poem, the single “The Witness” evokes a full-band shimmer, as Vallejos’ drumming offers a sturdy rhythm alongside Pollett’s vocals—both natural and occasionally treated—and synth washes provide a deep, multitextured atmosphere. An earlier single, “Radio Player”, released last October, beautifully combines beds of subtle, twitching noise with drum programming and big keyboard flourishes.
On their Bandcamp page, Pollett described the song as “a song about memory and fear, loosely based on seeing the movie Poltergeist at too young an age… it is a journey through the hallways of childhood that we leave a light on within.” “When I fell asleep, it was dark,” they sing with deep vulnerability amongst a bed of tuneful noise and static. “Now a light is coming from the TV / I told you that I saw a ghost / I just need you to believe me.”
Other highlights include the unmoored, anthemic balladry of “Second Guesser” (bolstered beautifully by the low-end, growling ebb of synths alongside acoustic guitar), the single “Like a River”, which chugs along a low-key, buzzing, midtempo groove, and the gorgeous, ambient instrumental soundscape “Yasaka, Natsu”, transitioning beautifully into the closing track, “Tacit”, which begins as a gentle, acoustic guitar-based performance, before other instruments and effects gradually build over time.
Pollett describes If I Let It Quiet as “an exploration of what it takes to quiet the noise of geographical and emotional distance in order to hear ourselves and ones who see us”. It accomplishes what lesser records often fail to achieve: combining striking moments of experimentation with an uncanny knack for beautiful, often breathtaking songwriting.