Julien Baker - Little Oblivions (February 26, 2021; Matador) Album • Page 14

This threads awesome right now. Great responses, and all very personal.

 

I listened to rejoice again after reading yalls posts and yea i totally get it now. I don’t think i was ever listening in the right headspace before.

 

Julien Baker is maybe the only artist I know who if you said literally any of her songs was your favorite I'd have a hard time disagreeing

 

“Go Home” is the runaway winner for me. Favorite song of hers since the moment I heard it and that probably won’t change. It’s such a perfect conclusion to her journey on Sprained Ankle — a quiet moment at the end of your rope that ends in a call and response with divinity.

I remember walking around listening to this album for the first time in the cold, struck speechless by how someone could speak so clearly to an emptiness and loneliness I was feeling (even if hers came from a different source than my own). Then you get to “Go Home” and she’s walking down a road by herself, speaking directly to God, feeling like there’s no answers... it was such an overwhelming image that felt like it was mirroring my own situation. And after she lets out that final, piercing plea into the void, like she’s giving herself over to whatever happens next, she just wants it to end. And then almost immediately that preacher recording breaks through the static, and that piano hymn plays, and it sounds like an answer after all of the pain and sadness of the album that there’s someone out there to comfort you. I just cried so hard.

And then to find out later that it wasn’t even intentional, that somehow her pre-amp equipment just picked up a local frequency of a church radio recording? Kismet.

 

The only downside to that great "In Christ Alone" ending is, based on a few videos I've seen, she leaves it out of live performances of "Go Home"? The song doesn't hit the same way w/out that part.

Really, I'd kill for a version where she actually sang "In Christ Alone."

 

@ItsAndrew can attest to me absolutely losing my shit when I finally got to see Go Home live for the first time.

 

So good.

 

Has there been no word on her new album at all besides the producer saying it's finished?

 

Nope, other than her saying in an interview last year it will probably be out this year, but Covid-19 could be delaying the release.

 

I just wish she'd restock that Rejoice/Complain shirt.

 

I will probably have anxiety for the next several years about going to shows but I will fight that the first chance I get to see Julien again. I neeeeeed it.

 

I dunno if it's considered childish or whatever but "Everybody Does" is still probably my favorite from her. But I might consider Turn Out the Lights the superior album? Excited for whatever in any case.

 

Not childish at all. You like what you like! My favourites are Sprained Ankle, Happy To Be Here, Conversation Piece and Sour Breath.

 

Calling a song as good as Everybody Does your favorite could never be childish

 

Sprained Ankle is definitely my favorite album, but Turn Out The Lights has higher highs.

 

Sprained Ankle is still the one I listen to most. But I can only listen to Julien when I'm like... sad... haha. So it's not very often, fortunately?

 

Sprained Ankle is so special. So is Turn Out the Lights, but the fact that Julien was a teenager on Sprained Ankle and recorded it for her close friends... There's just something especially profound and intimate about that record. Like, not just in relation to Turn Out the Lights, but in relation to every other record in existence.

 

Sprained Ankle means more to me, I guess. I have a deeper emotional connection to it. However, TOTL is basically 1b. I adore both of them, and if I found TOTL first, it would probably be my favorite.

 

I love Sprained Ankle, but it doesn't top TOTL IMO. Maybe it's just cause TOTL was the one that REALLY got me into her (I heard Sprained Ankle around the time it came out, but didn't dive into it as deep as I have since TOTL came out) and the timing of that (the end of 2017/start of 2018 was really rough for me), but TOTL connects in a way that Sprained Ankle falls a little short of.

 

Put on Sprained Ankle again tonight (for the first time in a bit). Reminded me why it’s such an important record to me. I swear it’ll never get old.

 

When this album comes out, it's going to destroy whatever Phoebe's album left of me, which isn't much

 

I have a feeling we won't be getting the album until either winter or 2021. I think she was planning on an earlier release (she was set to do a conversation with Bob Boilen back in April, play Forecastle Festival, and open for Sharon Van Etten) so we probably would have gotten some new music debuted or more info on an album but with the pandemic I have a feeling she's just waiting for a better time to announce/release it.

 

Julien's friend and opener on her 2018 European tour dropped her new album today and it's very good. Julien is also featured on the album.

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