Uncovering Little Oblivions: An Interview with Julien Baker
Photo by Alysse Gafkjen
Talking to Julien Baker is like talking to an old friend. She’s the highly intelligent friend who has you googling every word she says, in an effort to keep up with her seemingly fully-realized thoughts on the world. She’s the poetic friend whose writing articulates the experiences you’ve never been able to put to words. She’s the friend who feels like home. Even though your paths have diverged, you come back together after months apart and discuss the trials and tribulations of early adulthood, realizing that life has different ways of teaching us all the exact same lessons. The major difference is that her life lessons can be streamed on Spotify.
Baker is known to pair heavy lyrics with stripped down production. While her most recent release Little Oblivions is no less emotive than previous works, the increased instrumentation on this record marks a notable departure from her typical sound. When asked about this evolution Baker stated, “It’s not so much that I made a deliberate choice to have drums and expanded production on this record, as much as it’s just that I allowed myself to do those things.” She interrogated whether the “stylistic tool of minimalism” that she previously found to be reliable was actually representative of her artistry. “I just put out these very delicate songs because those were the resources available to me,” she describes. “I just had my guitar, so I just wrote songs for my guitar. And then that became the style of music that was associated with me and in which I excelled, and also part of the rhetoric that was constantly mirrored back at me.” This realization is one that artists often come to at varying points in their careers. How does a musician know whether their artist persona is one that actually represents them or if they are catering to the public’s perception of who they are?
Julien Baker is often thought of as the queer Christian girl from the south, who makes sad, stripped-down guitar music about mental health and addiction. While those descriptors are accurate, an overemphasis on them neglects to fully capture the range of her attributes as a person and as a musician, and allows little room for Baker to exist outside of these characterizations. “How do you not become a caricature of yourself? I did. I did and I might still be,” explains Baker, attempting to separate herself from the “ideal Julien” she crafted in her head. “I wonder if I can ever be free of [living into a characterization] in a world where there's a finite depth to how much a person can actually represent about anyone.”
In addition to feeling boxed in, she also felt held back by feelings of inferiority and overcompensated by “doing the absolute most” as a way to prove herself. She also recalls experiences collaborating with confident men who “[felt] the innate worthiness of the musical ideas they [had],” in a way that she did not. It wasn’t until she started working with Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus on their collaborative boygenius record that she began to shift her negative self-perception, taking note of her collaborators’ self-assuredness and seeking to emulate it. Although worried that her confidence might be perceived as arrogance, she no longer saw the benefit in assuaging those worries with self-deprecation and overcompensation. “I wanted to be allowed to take up space. And that's okay. And it doesn't make me a crazy control freak to just want to value my art and take it seriously.”
Despite Baker’s own experiences with self-doubt, no one who listens to Little Oblivions needs to be convinced of her immense amount of talent. On “Highlight Reel,” she shows us what it looks like when excessive introspection turns unhealthy, revealing the more tortuous aspects of her thinking. On “Favor,” she grapples with the guilt of inflicting emotional pain on someone she loves, delivering gut punching lyrics and haunting vocals, aided by her boygenius collaborators. These songs are an aural representation of her increased confidence and willingness to take risks, while adhering to the exceptional lyricism and vocal delivery associated with her art. She chronicles her most personal experiences in the most beautiful and painfully poetic way.
Baker recently announced tour dates, starting in September 2021, which will be her first time back on the road in years. To say fans are excited is an understatement. According to Julien Baker, she’s “just an indie musician, out here doin’ stuff at a reasonable level.” According to us, we will see her soon, front row at our favorite venues, with tissues in hand.