The now 21-year-old Julien Baker returns with her new album Turn Out The Lights, exploring themes such as broken relationships, the search for a cure that may not exist and the impossibility of never truly understanding each other.
The album was recorded at Ardent Studios in her hometown of Memphis, TN, and mixed by Craig Silvey. Strings and woodwinds now shade the corners of her compositions, and Baker takes to piano rather than guitar on several tracks. These new textures push Baker’s work to cinematic heights of intensity.
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 Turn Out The Lights here.
