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The Gem is the fourth album from beloved local singer/songwriter Julia Jacklin, out now via 4AD/Remote Control Records.

The Gem was produced by Jacklin and Robert Muinos at the Collingwood dive bar of the same name, making it Jacklin's first album recorded entirely in Melbourne, a place she's called home since 2017.

It's an album that finds Jacklin at her most self-assured, a liberating document of emotional excavation, re-birth and self-acceptance. 

“The Gem felt like a metaphor for the whole process, because a lot of it did feel like digging. I felt like I was almost doing it in the dark, just trusting that I was going to find something,” says Jacklin of the record. 

“I thought I’d finished the record a year before I actually did. It was mixed. It was mastered. We had a listening party. We celebrated. And two days later, I was like, It's not done. I realised that I had not yet healed from some things." It was the first time Jacklin had taken more than a couple of weeks to record an album, pushing her songwriting into uncharted waters with a sense of restlessness and intentionality.  

Musically, The Gem features some of Jacklin's most adventurous songwriting yet, with her band of close friends and collaborators providing a bedrock for newfound sonic experimentation and musical growth. 

At the core of the songs, however, remains Jacklin's gift of universal songwriting, and her ability to extract deeply personal accounts of life, love and loss into songs that are imbued with an eternal sense of relatability.