Sixty Summers

With Julia Stone's new record comes the grit and glitter of the city, and all its attendant joys and dangers, romances and risks. No longer content to merely explore the wildernesses of folk and indie-rock, Sixty Summers, Stone's third solo outing, finds the celebrated songwriter diving head first into the cosmopolitan, hedonistic world of late-night, moonlit pop. Dirt under foot is replaced with wet pavement and sticky dancefloors; blue skies are traded for red lights and red lips. A dazzling reintroduction to the beloved Stone, Sixty Summers presents that rarest of transformations: not a metamorphosis or cheap makeover, but a shedding of skin, a revealing. Itis Stone at her truest, brightest self, a powerful and revered icon finally painting herself with her own brush and her own palette.

Recorded sporadically over five years from 2015 to 2019, Sixty Summers was shaped profoundly by Stone's 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 National's Matt Berninger and Bryce Dessner, ended up on the album, Bartlett's studio was perfect fertile ground for Stone's growth. "Making this record with Thomas, I felt so free. I can hear it in the music," says Stone. "He brings a sense of confidence to recording sessions."

The scope of Sixty Summers is dizzyingly vast; miles away from Stone's past work, it is a world unto itself, a surreal and breath-taking new landscape. Where Stone's previous solo records, 2010's 'The Memory Machine' and 2014's '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.