Julia Pratt’s ‘Family Feud’ is a Feat in Forgiveness and Self-Understanding

In only five tracks, Julia Pratt tells her whole life story, from a blame-filled childhood to welcoming acceptance through personal change

PHOTO BY LINDSEY DADOURIAN

Philadelphia-based singer/songwriter Julia Pratt’s Family Feud EP is an exploration of family relationships, spanning the lifetime of a child working through her trauma in just five tracks. From a young, heavy-hearted child telling her mother of visions, to an adult accepting the hurt family can cause and responding with love, Pratt shows exemplary honesty lyrically. 

Tonally, the EP is complemented beautifully with layered melodies and R&B techniques mused through folky indie tracks. The variation between songs is impressive — from a 70s-esque rock track (“Bull in a China Shop”) to an R&B ballad with whining folk guitar (“Michael”). 

Family Feud begins with “Visions,” easing from winding melodies into a full-bodied call for recognition, punctuated by heavy percussion and electric guitar. In this track alone, the duality of Pratt’s musical comfort shines: she can hold both sweet, upper-register refrains while hitting the listener directly with the intensity even a child can feel. Over and over, the lyric, “Mom I had a vision” comes to bear more weight than the first half of the song would imply. 

Immediately following, “Bull in a China Shop” ages up the narrator of the story. Like the last track, the singer addresses her parents, implicating them in the assignment of her role as a disruptor. She asks, “Dad can you hear me? I’m no longer angry / in fact I smile / it’s all perfectly fine,” to a running-pace beat. Pratt says about the song, “Marked as the scapegoat of the family, I’ve struggled my whole life to see myself outside of this role.”

She shows acceptance of this singing,  “I’ll just stay here, I promise I won’t break a thing.” But of course, the lyrical implications go so much further than staying in a fragile place with “a rage that can’t be stopped.” It seems to tell the listener Pratt will stay stuck in this teenage self emotionally, believing in a tenuous balance she is responsible for maintaining. 

However, “Carolina” brings an exposition that counters this younger voice, presenting change and begging for acceptance. In small changes of the refrain, Pratt tells so much in just a few words: “I don’t feel how I used to feel around you / I don’t feel how I wanna feel around you / I don’t feel how I’m ‘sposed to feel around you / I don’t feel anymore.” Matched with the soaring runs that echo through the whole project, Pratt takes on a more adult voice in this track, both a turning point in the story and what feels like the heart of it.

The song is punctuated with one of my personal favorite lyrics on the EP — though the whole song is hit after truthful hit. Pratt sings, “Oh Carolina, now you’ve seen me / Am I all you hoped, Carolina? / Am I nothing you should tell your friends about? / Let the tears slip from the clouds / But your tears are not allowed, Carolina.” Whether she means to say the tears are not given permission after so much hurt, or are not heard aloud in being hidden away so long — both feel true.

“Chronos, Cruel Handler” evokes the mythical Greek figure of time, as Pratt unpacks cycles of trauma in her family; she sings, “Mirror of mine, now that I have you / We both had so much to prove.” She sympathizes with her father, unraveling the string between their upbringings and asks, “Product of the past, don’t you know they lied to you?” In this, she acknowledges that a parent’s own imperfect childhood can be the root of the one they create for their child, bringing with it the pains of the generations before.

But in a final synthesis — pain, sympathy and forgiveness all brought together — Pratt closes the EP with “Michael.” To the choir-esque harmonies, she sings of finding a new way forward from what she was taught, punctuated by children’s laughs in the background. The methodical piano pushes the song forward, while Pratt’s mesmerizing voice tells of determination to prove herself as something more than the sum of her experiences. 

In just five tracks, Pratt follows an entire life, culminating in the truth that “I love you though I can’t remember why.” Family Feud is undeniably impressive in every way: Pratt’s spiraling vocals and ability to shift not only the entire project, but a single song from indie ballad to percussive R&B has the listener floating behind her the whole way. And ultimately, whether they’ve shared in her experiences or not, listeners are unlikely to be left with the dry eye Pratt says she has in the final lyrics.