Day 47: Julien Baker — Turn Out the Lights
As with grief, heartbreak, and any manner of sad, unavoidable experiences that make life feel more like a curse than a gift, I knew that reviewing the new Julien Baker album Turn Out the Lights was something I’d inevitably have to face. I put it off as long as I could. I tried to dive in Saturday evening, but quickly realized I didn’t want to let Baker’s withering emotional honesty kill my vibe. The same went for Sunday. And Monday.
But here I am on a Tuesday night, shortly after filing copy for one of my freelance gigs hours later than I should have. I can attest that this album has the power to derail your whole day if you listen to it with open ears and an open heart. But that’s a small price to pay for the chance to lose yourself within perhaps the most arresting album I’ve reviewed so far.
Just like on Sprained Ankle, Baker’s new record is a stripped-down affair that features little more than an electric guitar, some reverb, the occasional piano accent, and her voice. The instrumentation and arrangements never threaten to swallow up or overwhelm what Baker has to say, nor do feel unfulfilling or out of place. If you want to hear them, influences ranging from Elliott Smith to Explosions in the Sky show up in Baker’s self-production, and mixer Craig Silvey’s past work with The National also shines through, especially on a track like “Shadowboxing.”
Its rare that a young musician can summon so much pathos with just a set of vocal cords. At times, the register and pacing of Baker’s vocals sounds like someone whose words have no choice but to escape despite whatever hurt or despondency inspires them. When she raises her voice on “Turn Out the Lights”, you can hear her straining to fly away from her troubles before snapping back to the painful reality of her unfiltered thoughts. Yet she always manages to sound like she has a personal connection with the listener, like you’ve been drafted to participate in some strange sort of musical therapy.
The juxtaposition of beautiful melodies with poetic and achingly vulnerable lyrics makes for one of the more disarming albums of the year, and Turn Out the Lights has no shortage of lines or lyrical ideas that’ll punch you in the gut. Sour Breath’s description of the toll that substance abuse takes on a toxic relationship is particularly poignant: “Think all the liquor’s gonna keep you warm. Burn down everything to prove you could. Leave me inside in a body made of wood.”
The first verse of “Hurt Less”, where Baker muses about being killed in an car accident over a piano track that sounds vaguely reminiscent of “Waltz #1” manages to evoke both The Smiths and Elliott Smith at the same time into something even sadder. It’s too hard and redundant of an exercise to list all the times that Baker articulates (inter)personal struggles, anxiety and depression so succinctly. As long as you don’t go into this somehow expecting the kind of joie de vivre that defines, say, a Japandroids record, you’re bound to find something that sounds so relatable you’ll swear it came from inside your own head.
David Foster Wallace once wrote that to live with crippling depression is to “really understand a terror way beyond falling” out of a burning building. I feel like Julien Baker would agree, but thankfully her story diverges from Wallace’s. Though album closer “Claws In Your Back” describes living with that same sort of invisible terror, Baker’s made it clear by the album’s last notes that she has “changed her mind” and “want[s] to stay”. From the sound of it, she’s been to hell and back. But thankfully, we have this record and its unflinching portrayal of life’s crushing lows and the aching desire to love, to connect, and to be whole enough to carry on. I’d like to think that she found some form of catharsis in writing these sparse, gorgeous songs, and I’d recommend that everyone look for it by hearing them. Lord knows I only wish I could’ve expressed a fraction as well as Julien Baker does when I was 21 and 22.
