JULIEN BAKER
Turn Out The Lights is out today!
Praise for Julien Baker
“…breathtakingly confessional lyrics, a voice that sounds as brittle and broken as it is beautiful, paired with funereal, choral guitar work – but expands confidently on the blueprint by incorporating strings, woodwind and more piano into these lusher arrangements.” – Rolling Stone Australia ★★★★
“Her voice is an astonishingly expressive instrument, a strained half-whisper when it has to be and a gale-force cry when the moment calls for it.” – Stereogum, Album Of The Week
“There are few voices in indie rock more conspiratorial, more resilient, more casually harrowing than Julien Baker’s.” – The New York Times
“…Her voice breaks through more forcefully than before, like she knows she’s singing to a whole crowd of loners who feel just as bereft as she does.” – Pitchfork
“Baker doesn’t just make you feel, she makes it feel real. Very, very real.” – Paste Magazine
Julien Baker releases her critically acclaimed new album Turn Out The Lights today via Matador Records / Remote Control Records.
With Turn Out The Lights, the now 21-year-old Baker returns to a much bigger stage but with the same core of breathtaking vulnerability and resilience of debut album Sprained Ankle. From its opening moments – when her chiming, evocative melody is accompanied by swells of strings – Turn Out The Lights throws open the doors to the world without sacrificing the intimacy that has become a hallmark of her songs.
The album was recorded at the legendary Ardent Studios in her hometown of Memphis, TN, and mixed by Craig Silvey (The National, Florence & The Machine, Arcade Fire). The evolution from Sprained Ankle’s intentionally spare production allowed greater scope and freedom for Baker, who is still the album’s sole writer and producer. Strings and woodwinds now shade the corners of her compositions, andBaker takes to piano rather than guitar on several tracks. In songs like the epic “Claws In Your Back” these new textures push Baker’s work to cinematic heights of intensity.
Stand out tracks on Turn Out The Lights include ‘Sour Breath’, ‘Everything to Help You Sleep’ and ‘Shadowboxing’. On these tracks Baker explores themes such as broken relationships, the search for a cure that may not exist and the impossibility of never truly understanding each other.
Baker continually returns to the possibility of joy, “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,” Baker says. “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.”
Purchase / Stream Julien Baker – Turn Out The Lights here.
Julien Baker ‘Turn Out The Lights’ (Official Video)
Stream / Purchase
Julien Baker – Turn Out The Lights
Over
Appointments
Turn Out The Lights
Shadowboxing
Sour Breath
Televangelist
Everything That Helps You Sleep
Happy To Be Here
Hurt Less
Even
Claws In Your Back
Julien Baker – Turn Out The Lights is out now via Matador Records / Remote Control Records.
