Julien Baker. Photo credit: Alysse Gafkjen.
Julien Baker will release her third studio album, Little Oblivions, on February 26 via Matador Records/Rhythmethod.
Today she reveals the first look at the album via ‘Faith Healer’, which introduces the exhilarating, widescreen musical
palette and infectious spirit of risk-taking found on Little Oblivions, a transformative sonic shift from Baker’s more
spare and intimate previous work.
Watch the Daniel Henry-directed video HERE.
“I think that "Faith Healer" is a song about vices, both the obvious and the more insidious ways that they show up in
the human experience”, says Baker. “I started writing this song 2 years ago and it began as a very literal examination
of addiction. For a while, I only had the first verse, which is just a really candid confrontation of the cognitive
dissonance a person who struggles with substance abuse can feel-- the overwhelming evidence that this substance is
harming you, and the counterintuitive but very real craving for the relief it provides. When I revisited the song I
started thinking about the parallels between the escapism of substance abuse and the other various means of escapism
that had occupied a similar, if less easily identifiable, space in my psyche.
There are so many channels and behaviours that we use to placate discomfort unhealthily which exist outside the formal
definition of addiction. I (and so many other people) are willing to believe whomever-- a political pundit, a preacher,
a drug dealer, an energy healer-- when they promise healing, and how that willingness, however genuine, might actually
impede healing.”
Little Oblivions was recorded in Baker’s hometown of Memphis, Tennessee between December 2019 and January 2020. It was
engineered by Calvin Lauber and mixed by Craig Silvey (The National, Florence & the Machine, Arcade Fire). Baker’s tactile guitar and piano playing are enriched with newfound textures encompassing
bass, drums, synthesisers, banjo and mandolin, with nearly all of the instruments performed by Baker. The album weaves
unflinching autobiography with assimilated experience and often hard-won observations from the past few years, taking
Baker’s capacity for starkly galvanising storytelling to breathtaking new heights.
Little Oblivions is the follow up to Baker’s 2017 sophomore album and first on Matador Turn Out The Lights. The New York
Times said the LP is “the work of a songwriter who has resonated with an international audience (…), the rare second
album that, despite new self-consciousness, stretches beyond an unspoiled debut to reach for even bigger things, with
all its passion intact”. The Sunday Times said “the mix of detached vocals, lush arrangements and laid-bare post-mortems
on love, loss, dysfunction and acceptance is devastating".
In 2018 Baker formed boygenius with Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus. The resulting eponymous EP and joint North American
tour made for one of the most celebrated and talked about musical communions of 2018, highlighting Baker at the
forefront of a burgeoning generation of era-defining artists.
An intense and immersive performer, her live shows were described by The New Yorker as “…. hushed, reverential. The only
sounds you hear between songs are her fingers as she tweaks the tuning on her electric guitar, scattered whispers
between friends, and the rustling as the crowd waits patiently for Baker to start strumming again”.