“I think I can love the sickness you made, I want it to stay”, Julien Baker – Claws In Your Back
Today sees the release of the long awaited new album Turn Out The Lights from Memphis singer-songwriter/multi instrumentalist and producer Julien Baker. It’s the follow up to her beautifully spare guitar driven debut Sprained Ankle released in 2015. That same spartan space is still prevalent, again allowing for a dizzying array of emotions to flow, but is now complemented by carefully inserted string and woodwind laden embellishments as well as Baker taking to the piano, the maintenance of a rustic, earthy lived in feel realised. An intensely personal album, it’s culturally reflective of her theism within which she searches for answers through rhetorical questions she knows she can never possibly find. It also lyrically deals in battles with self-confidence and self-worth and the fight against nagging self-doubt. Throughout the record, the want for the acceptance of a significant other and others in general is slowly left behind but its a struggle. Our fragile mental health is like that, especially in the context of unforgiving internal and external environments, where room to ponder and wonder is continually narrowed. For the pursuit of happiness with any sense of closure or fulfilment is a futile one, but internalised joy on the other hand occurs in moments, almost by osmosis and they are the moments to cherish without cognisance. Sadness will always be present and that’s ok too. According to Baker;
“I don’t believe in the ‘fixing’ part, where what healing means is that you no longer get sad or experience grief or panic attacks. Happy is kind of a fleeting and transient emotion. It is not a destination that you can get to by exerting enough mental effort. I believe that joy is something that you can invite into present circumstance. Whereas happiness seems to be this horizon that’s eternally getting further from you, joy is something that you can inhabit.”
Turn Out The Lights was written and produced by Baker herself, recorded at the famous Ardent studios and mixed by Craig Silvey. Watch the Sophia Peer directed videos for the title track and ‘Appointments’ below and get your copy on vinyl here
Tracklist
1. Over
2. Appointments
3. Turn Out the Lights
4. Shadowboxing
5. Sour Breath
6. Televangelist
7. Everything That Helps You Sleep
8. Happy to Be Here
9. Hurt Less
10. Even
11. Claws in Your Back
Turn Out The Lights
Julien Baker (USA)
From the album, ‘Turn Out The Lights’, Matador/Remote Control.
Julien Baker Facebook
Official Video
Appointments
Julien Baker (USA)
From the album, ‘Turn Out The Lights’, Matador/Remote Control.
Official Video