Julia Jacklin has taken the steering wheel for her Crushing tour

Jacklin's debut album Don't Let The Kids Win was only six weeks old, almost universally-acclaimed and she was holed up at Barnard Castle in Durham during her first major UK tour.

Only a few months earlier the then 26-year-old had been working in an essential oils factory in Sydney, but now she was an in-demand singer-songwriter. It was a life-changing shift.

At the time the introverted indie-folk artist spoke of struggling with finding "balance" on tour and managing the creative stress she felt in delivering another batch of songs.

It was the anxiety and the sense of losing control on her own self and body that sparked the tension on Jacklin's impressive second album, Crushing, released last week.

When Weekender phones Jacklin this week she's in Sydney ready to fly to Christchurch for the second gig of her Australasian tour, which finishes in Newcastle on March 16.

The Blue Mountains-raised 28-year-old is sounding confident and in control and obviously buoyed from the rave reviews Crushing has received. 

Rolling Stone and the UK's NME both gave the album four stars, while the notoriously critical US taste-masters Pitchfork awarded a rating of 7.7/10 and praised Jacklin for her ability "to mine minuscule details from immensely complex situations and package them in searing couplets."

Did Jacklin need the positive reinforcement to make Crushing worthwhile?

"An actually pretty good in not needing that, especially in the creative process," she says. "I'm not too fussed about getting validation when I'm writing songs because that can kind of mess you around."

Fans of Jacklin's first album will naturally feel comfortable with Crushing's sweet slices of indie-folk. But while Don't Let The Kids Win was filled with a sense of nostalgia, due to its Americana sound, Crushing has erased the whimsical flourishes.

READ MORE: The Newcastle Herald's 4-star review of Crushing

Jacklin and her producer Burke Reid (Courtney Barnett, The Drones) recorded the album last autumn at The Grove Studios on the Central Coast with many of the vocal sessions held in the dead of night in near darkness.

"Because they're quite emotional songs I wanted to deliver them properly and really get into that head space," Jacklin says. "I needed to be in the dark and needed to be very tired so I wasn't too self-conscious about it.

"That was a new experience for me because I stick to pretty regular hours."

You can clearly hear the exhaustion in Jacklin's usually pitch-perfect voice on the single Pressure To Party.

While musically Crushing adopts a more minimalist sound, lyrically the record hits with ferocity compared to the naivety of Don't Let The Kids Win.

The album is essentially a break-up record about how Jacklin lost her own identity under the pressures of her former relationship and her new public profile as an international touring musician.

"I think touring in general played into a lot of the themes on the record, just feeling outside of myself and feeling very claustrophobic emotionally and physically," she says.

"It was definitely a weird time of my life, but very inspiring musically."

As Jacklin prepares to return to the road for her biggest Australian run, followed by a year of international touring, is she better prepared to deal with the rigours ahead?

"I think every artist must go through that," she says. "The first experience of touring you have no idea what you're doing so you say yes to everything and put up with everything because you're just so amazed that you're actually able to do it.

"Now it's become my source of income, my life and my workplace, it's not just a long holiday, I've come to approach it much differently now."

In order to maintain her own mental health on tour Jacklin has taken ownership of her career, instead of allowing publicists and record labels to turn her into a mere statistic on a spreadsheet.

"At first I was so grateful anybody was doing anything for me and I was this grateful, miserable mess," she says.

"Now I'm like no. It's a small business and everyone is here to work and it's important that everyone feels happy.

"And occasionally saying it might cost a bit more money, but let's all get separate rooms once every fortnight on tour instead of trying to save a bit of money and driving everyone crazy."

READ MORE: Jacklin on her debut Don't Let The Kids Win

Jacklin has also been forced to create boundaries between herself and fans after some unfortunate incidents where she was inappropriately touched.

She expresses her anger in the song Head Alone when she sings, "I don't want to be touched all the time/I raised my body up to be mine" and then later, "You can love somebody without using your hands."

Jacklin is ready to enforce these boundaries on her latest tour. 

"A big thing for me is calling out bad behaviour as soon as you see it, instead of letting it fester," she says.

"You don't think one thing will be a problem, but when it happens a lot of the time, it starts to get to you.

"Even if I'm touched inappropriately at a gig instead of just going, 'I'm not going to deal with it now because I'm too tired,' I will hopefully confront that in the moment so I don't have to carry that feeling around in me even if it might be an awkward exchange.

"It happens to women every day in every workplace, especially one where it's late night and a lot of alcohol involved."

Besides her own solo material, Jacklin's profile has also grown due to the success last year of her band Phantastic Ferniture's debut self-titled album.

The indie-rock three-piece, which also features Liz Hughes (guitar) and Ryan Brennan (drums), had been playing together on the Sydney scene for five years as a fun side-project from their solo work.

But the popularity of the album and singles like Bad Timing and F--kin 'n' Rollin' led to hopes that Phantastic Ferniture would become a more serious band. But Jacklin doubts there will be a second album.

"That band for us is just about fun," she says. "We never wanted to put it through the music industry machine and take away the joy of it in a way. I don't know, there's loose plans. I've got no idea at the moment."

One thing Jacklin is certain about is there's no plans to follow Crushing soon.

"With albums I need to have something to say and right now I don't have anything to say because I feel like I've said it.

"I need to go through another big life experience to have something else to say. I'll probably write another album when I'm sitting in a tour van wanting to get out again," she laughs.

Julia Jacklin plays at the Cambridge Hotel on March 16.