Jack Garratt – Pillars
Bursting onto the scene in 2016, Jack Garratt’s dazzling productions and ambitious one-man live shows set him apart from his contemporaries. Garratt’s debut offering, Phase, earned him a BRIT Critics’ Choice Award before landing in the top-five UK album charts. 2020 saw the release of his sophomore album: the electronica-tinged Love, Death and Dancing dispensed with some of the darker tones of his previous record and presented a more optimistic vision.
Pillars is Garratt’s latest effort. Created in the wake of a divorce, the album examines love in its many forms, at turns brutal, ruinous, terrifying and ecstatic. Personal strife might have preceded the record, but the Pillars is an ultimately positive exploration of its aftermath.
This is represented well in Manifest/It’ll All Be Alright in the End. The track has the quality of a voice memo draped in glittering sound design, revolving around the core pairing of voice and piano. This arrangement resurfaces throughout the album, grounding expansive sound design in a more intimate depiction of Garratt’s emotional state.
Having produced this project almost entirely himself, we hear Garratt experiment playfully with his classic influences. Ready! Steady! Go! pulls from 70s funk and disco, with layered, stabby brass giving particular lift to the choruses. Later on in the album, Love Myself Again welds a soulful melody to infectious, punchy rhythms – a showcase of blues and funk elaborated through detailed electronic production.
The more straightforward pop numbers carry less impact. Catherine Wheel’s uplifting, explosive momentum feels asynchronous with the opening two tracks. As in Shaftesbury Avenue, the wall of sound used to drive home the choruses loses some of the pleasing nuance that’s heard elsewhere.
One highlight of this nuance is Garratt’s voice, which shines across the record. From exposed, singular vocal lines to blossoming gospel harmonies, the artist’s delivery leaves nothing to be desired. It’s encapsulated best in Flower Girl Confetti, Hopeful Fidelity Lasts, where sparse production allows his performance to really cut through on the central refrain: “I’ve waited, waited, and it’s over now.”
Pillars weaves between introspection and fantasy, unflinchingly depicting Garratt’s inner journey through love, loss and recuperation.
Ben Browning
Image: Wolf James
Pillars is released on 15th August 2025. For further information or to order the album, visit Jack Garratt’s website here.
Watch the video for Higher here:
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