Last year, the Australian singer-songwriter Julia Jacklin came out with Crushing, a great album that combines dream-pop with country. Earlier this year, before everything went to shit, Jacklin directed a video for fellow Australians Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever. After everything went down, Jacklin released two new songs, “to Perth, before the border closes” and “CRY,” for the Sub Pop Singles Club. Today, she’s come out with another new one. It’s a sort of Christmas song, but it’s not exactly the cheerful type.

On “baby jesus is nobody’s baby now,” Jacklin sings about a hellish family gathering: “The family asked me to sing them all a song/ Get up in the lounge while they keep the tv on/ Pick a fun one, everybody claps/ Play to cold cuts, trembling their last.” The lyrics allude to a miscarriage, or a breakup, or both.

Like a lot of Jacklin’s songs, “baby jesus is nobody’s baby now” chronicles a quiet and desperate form of depression, the kind that you try not to let the people around you see. Jacklin plays it solo-acoustic, singing softly and hitting some heavily empathetic chords. This is a heavy one.

Jacklin co-directed the song’s video with Nick Mckk. In the clip, she wears a glittery red Christmas cape and sings the song while standing in front of a blue-sky backdrop. It’s a seemingly-cheery image that quickly turns out to be a facade. Below, watch the video and read what Jacklin says about the song.

Jacklin says:

2019 was a pretty rough one for my family. I was touring the whole year carrying a lot of guilt for not being able to be at home. Singing super sad songs every night was a blessing and a curse depending on the day. I was imagining Christmas as being this time where we all came together again and took a collective breath but then the bushfires hit and my family live in the country so it was a direct threat. I was living in Melbourne, still pretty new to it, and wasn’t able to go home, the roads were blocked and my family were being evacuated periodically for a month. At one point Melbourne was blanketed in smoke from the fires, the sun was this menacing red, it felt apocalyptic and pretty hopeless. I wrote this in my room looking forward to 2020, hoping it would be a reset of some kind lol.

The costume was made by my mother Marion Crossman a couple of weeks ago when we were living together in rural NSW and the backdrop was painted by my younger brother Eamonn Briggs on Nick Mckks driveway.

“baby jesus is nobody’s baby now” is out now on Polyvinyl.