Written by Brandon George
Content Warning for Internalized Homophobia and Suicidal Ideation
You begin your drive in the backwoods to a job you don’t think you’ll ever truly call home. You plug in your music player, turn up the volume, and scroll to Julien Baker’s “Little Oblivions.”
Her first two albums found you in vulnerable places, vulnerable times. This one is noticeably louder, more sonically diverse than anything she’s done previously.
You’re not sure what’s going to happen next. You press play.
The immediacy of “Hardline” violently thrusts you back into your youth. You’re twelve years old, staring at yourself in the mirror in the youth group bathroom while an organ violently heralds the album’s opening.
The slow, echoing guitar line and pittering electronic drums bring in Baker’s beginning address. With it comes the memory of the first time you ever felt attracted to another boy.
Growing up in a Catholic community, you tell yourself it’s a mistake, a trick of the hormonal light conjured up by your incessant yearning and unpopularity. Baker calls out, “I can see where this is going / But I can't find the brake,” the drums collide, and the instrumentation crescendos as you brush aside that horrid inevitability.
The lyricism on the album is paired perfectly with the composition, each heartrending line placed precariously at the vulnerable moments when the spiraling guitars hold their breath. The rollicking drums and playful synth of “Heatwave” give way to the mellifluous reminders of your struggles with suicide that have plagued you since your teens.
The reverb-drenched swells and pirouetting guitars of “Faith Healer” cut to Baker’s cry, “Faith healer, come put your hands on me / A snake oil dealer / I'll believe you if you make me feel something,” reminding you of the second time you fell for a boy. You’re not sure yet what it means that you still like girls.
Can you do that? Are you broken? Who could heal you if you were? Certainly not God. He hates people like you, so you’ve heard.
“Ringside” is the first time you start crying. You’re in your early twenties and your mental health is the worst it’s ever been.
An isolated drum beat signals a low, distorted guitar. Finally, Baker whispers, “Nobody deserves a second chance, but, honey, I keep getting them,” and there are tears streaming down your face.
You will be cold and distant and you will lie, doing everything in your power to sever the connections between you and the people who love you with such a violent intensity that you’re scared. The worst thing is that most of them will forgive you.
To quote the late Scott Hutchison,“Highlight Reel,” the track that strikes closest to your core, can be described no better than to say it’s a painting of a panic attack. The rolling snare and layered vocals drive the rising synths and slow, deliberate guitar, creating a soundscape of memory.
They pull you away from your memory and put you back in the driver’s seat on the way to work. You’re closer to thirty now than twenty.
Your back pain’s faded since you’ve started getting in shape, but it still flares up when you don’t get enough sleep. Because of that, you often listen to music to help you get to sleep on time.
The record’s eponymous line cries, “Looking for little oblivions / I’d do anything knowing you would forgive me.” This is an album battling with that horrible thought that we might not be good people, or that being a “good” person isn’t even possible.
It is a reflection of how terrified of mercy you are, and that you find yourself so undeserving after having fought for it for so long. Every drum beat, every guitar line, every lyric, is meticulously hand-picked to craft twelve songs that each feel equally as exposed, as confessional, as cathartic.
Baker is an artist who has expressed a distaste for the expectations that public personas put on artists. She has stated an apprehension at the idea that “Sprained Ankle” and “Turn Out the Lights” have created an onstage image of her that is different from her actual self, so it'd be unfair to look at “Little Oblivions” in some sort of universal or objective sense.
In that way, I can only really look at it as something that struck me on a personal level, and will for some time. We learn things from the art we connect to.
So many musicians have tried to teach others that it’s okay to grow. From Julien Baker, I’ve learned that it’s okay to be wary of trusting that growth, but still to strive for it anyway.
“Little Oblivions” is out now and can be found wherever music is streaming, and you can support Julien Baker by following her on Twitter @JulienRBaker and picking up some merch. Let us know what you thought of the album by tweeting us at @lgndsoftmrw.
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