In 2014, a little-known artist named Julien Baker quietly uploaded a self-released EP to Bandcamp with few expectations. The nine songs on the release paired sparse guitar arrangements and Baker’s intimate vocals with introspective lyrics that explored depression, mortality, addiction and faith, showing off a candor that it was impossible not to feel affected by. Within a matter of months, it was picked up by 6131, who released it the following year as Baker’s debut solo album, Sprained Ankle, and catapulted Baker instantly into the limelight.
Reflecting on what the past two years have looked like, Baker articulates both an amazement and profound gratitude for the things she’s been able to experience as a result of the record’s success. “When I put out Sprained Ankle I had no aspirations for it – I never imagined I’d be able to go to Europe to tour twice on that record. I never thought I’d be able to tour outside the US. It’s been crazy.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly then, as Baker explains it, the past two years have marked a fairly dramatic shift as far as her day-to-day life is concerned. “It’s been a lot of getting used to perpetual transience, because it’s involved so much travel”, she explains. “Touring used to be something that, first of all, I booked for myself. A tour would consist of me emailing DIY promoters in whatever town and asking, ‘Can I please play your basement, or co-op, or mom’s living room?’
“These days, it’s been interesting trying to be present with people while being gone a lot. I think it’s given me a lot of perspective on people in general – and that’s been a good education in being mindful of others and situating myself and my position within the world. I’ve been really grateful for that”.
Baker acknowledges that what has largely sustained her throughout these touring cycles is interactions with her fans; encounters with those for whom the lyrics on Sprained Ankle have served as nothing less than a lifeline. “Seeing the record resonate with people is what fuels and motivates me to continue to play. That’s what seems like the most meaningful and precious thing about getting to do what I do. The first time I ever went to Australia, for instance, on the opposite hemisphere from where I live, as far away as I could possibly be from home, there were people talking to me about the record.”
Ultimately, those moments are as important for Baker as they are for fans. “I want it to be less about making myself the ‘icon’ of that interaction and making it an equation where I am a piece of something else; like a conduit for a larger, more important event.”
Seeing the record resonate with people is what fuels and motivates me to continue to play
That “larger, more important event” Baker speaks of is music’s capacity to serve as a catalyst for human communication, as well as a way of empowering people to enact real change in their lives.
And as anyone who has seen her play live will attest, Baker’s performances are often a ringing testament to that selfsame nature of shared vulnerability – not to mention the resilience it can engender. “There’s nothing like performing a song that is comprised of memories from the most painful parts of my life and then having the great fortune of those things somehow being transmuted into great memories that I can expel from myself and see reflected in a crowd.
“When I perform at a show, it’s different than me just making art that heals me and doing it as a solitary process in a studio. That provides a different kind of relief, but I think what really ends up being so powerful about that honesty once I’ve gotten it out into the world and spoken it is to see it resonate with people. I’m an artist that doesn’t have an explicit political agenda in my lyrics. It’s very idiocentric in a way, but hopefully honesty and vulnerability can be just as powerful in creating a space that empowers people to withstand and resist or work against the things they find to be unacceptable in the world.”
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Later this month, almost two years after the official release of Sprained Ankle, Baker will release its follow-up, Turn Out The Lights. In a lot of ways, the album is a continuation of the confessional, delicately woven storytelling that Baker first displayed back in 2015. But, that said, there’s a natural maturity throughout too, one that sees Baker both offer meditations on the duality of human experience, and explore the beautiful and complex ways that we navigate throughout the world.
An expanded instrumental range textures the album’s songwriting, with organs and strings providing additional layers to the song’s bare bones. “It was challenging, but in a good way”, says Baker of writing the record.
“I wanted to allow myself the room to explore possibilities of adding things, not shying away from them for the fear of how I was going to pull it off live. It’s been hard. One of the songs I have to play piano and guitar at the same time and it’s scary, and a lot going on, but it’s fun, and it’s a challenge.
“When I think about a great song, I think of one that, stripped of all its extras, could just stand as a poem and a melody and be intact. But I also think embellishment and things like organs and strings can provide a lot of interesting dynamics, and I wanted to try and do that without overproducing it. I always love to work with the adage that less is more, and figure out how little and subtle you can get in order to still create dramatic variance within a song.”
Julien Baker by Nolan Knight
Lyrically, Turn Out The Lights demonstrates significant personal growth for Baker, the album reflecting on the experiences of those around her rather than necessarily looking inward. Although Baker explains that writing songs is still predominantly a coping mechanism for difficult or painful events in her life, and that while the record focuses more on how others’ stories can provide perspective on her own issues, it’s still largely autobiographical in nature.
“When I wrote these songs, they began as pieces and fragments throughout a year and a half of touring. I would just listen to them and let them simmer and try to refine them. I wanted to reflect the same honesty about hurt and trauma and internal struggle that was on Sprained Ankle, but be a little more self-aware about how to confront those things.
If I know there are people listening this time, I want to say something worth saying
“With Sprained Ankle, people would ask me, ‘Do you regret writing songs on that record?’ – and no, I don’t. They were an accurate representation of where I was, and they have a documentary function, and it’s worth it to validate and acknowledge that those emotions exist. But they did seem a little bit self-involved and idiocentric. There seemed to be no self-awareness or consideration of how my internal processing worked, or affected other people around me, or the subconscious implications of it.”
Baker starts firing off the questions. “‘Why do I think this way? What else could I think? How could I gain some perspective on these thoughts, or use empathy to relate it to another person?’ I wanted to be a lot more intentional of the phrasing of how I deal with all those things on this record. If I know there are people listening this time, I want to say something worth saying; that I stand behind. I want to make the admission that things are pretty bleak, but have enough tact to include reasonable hopefulness in a not trite way.”
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When writing Turn Out The Lights, Baker had to consider something that hadn’t really crossed her mind while writing her debut – namely, that people were definitely going to be listening to the lyrics; and intently, too. “Sometimes I would write something and think, ‘I’m eventually going to have to sing this in front of a crowd, or talk about it in an interview,’ and that scares me,” she says.
And yet the moments Baker fretted over quickly proved to be the ones that she felt most convinced she had to include on the record. “The things that are painful and ugly are the things most pertinent to talk about. It’s easy to talk about things that are easy, but it heals us and does actual work within us to come to terms with the parts of ourselves that are difficult and we find ugly. I think when I show those things to other people I find that they’re not in fact so ugly.”
The awareness of that guaranteed listenership granted Baker the opportunity to consider the lyrics in a new way; to push and test her skills. “I wanted to craft the poetry of the songs a little more, and I had a lot more time to reflect on their organization. I think they come across as a less immediate type of lyricism. I didn’t want it to seem artificial, but I just had way more time to think through and reflect on the songs, and I was aware they were definitely going to get released, so I think I wanted to make something that showed growth and time and effort.
“If I’m now expecting people to pay however much it is for a record or show, I want them to feel like I am communicating serious gratitude and awareness that the only reason I get to live my passion as a job is that a listenership has invested in my music. I want to make art, in some sense, for other people as well as myself, because it’s ultimately not just about me.”
That desire to be part of a larger community rather than a solitary figure feels consistent with how Baker carries herself throughout the world at large. For instance, when I ask how she perceives the greater international community and her place in it, compared to the pre-Trump era in which Sprained Ankle was released, Baker takes some time before answering.
“The world is a petrifying and beautiful place right now. When I consider my daily frustrations and despair at the state of things, it always comes back around to me having to make myself smaller in the equation; having to not make it all about me and my feelings.
“I mean, I was devastated [by the election] because of the idea I had that there’s a limit to the corruption and potential for bad in the world to have its way. But I’m aware that the other party’s candidate [Hillary Clinton] was equally as corrupt and controlled by personal interest. The only thing about Trump is, unfortunately, his outspoken attitude about these things has given people license to be overt when they used to be covert.”
Baker pauses for a moment; takes breath. “I feel like all these evils were already present in the world and masked by a sort of pseudo-civility, but now they’re allowed to flourish, because we have someone empowering and validating hatred. I saw one of my friends, who is a person of colour, talking on Twitter about how they heard a white person say, ‘At least this is a chance for us to display hope and resilience as the political left’ and he [Baker’s friend] was like, ‘I’ve been living my identity as a black man for 30 years and you have no idea what it’s like. People were still racist when Obama was president, people were still racist when George W. Bush was president.’”
For Baker, what feels like the most effective form of resistance is allowing her own ego to get as small as it can, to consider the lived experience of others, and to try – to always try – to elevate their voices as much as possible. “The record’s just about me and my life – but I can reallocate the resources of the platform I’m on to help those people. I think being vocal about that is what’s most important.”
Turn Out The Lights is out through Matador/Remote Control on Friday October 27.
