Julien Baker's 'Little Oblivions': Soundtrack of Your Next Existential Crisis - The Emory Wheel
Julien Baker's 'Little Oblivions': Soundtrack of Your Next Existential Crisis - The Emory Wheel |
| Posted: 15 Mar 2021 06:50 PM PDT In October 2020, indie rock singer Julien Baker released "Faith Healer," a single that explores the fragile line between belief and disbelief, likening religious experience to a drug: the emptiness of getting clean and the desperation in scrambling to fill the void left behind. "Faith healer, come put your hands on me," Baker sings. "A snake oil dealer, I'll believe you if you make me feel something." On Feb. 26, Baker followed up her single with the album "Little Oblivions," which delves even deeper into that crisis of faith. "Little Oblivions" is for believers and non-believers alike — or, better yet, for the person who doesn't know what they believe in, just that they want to. That person who, lying awake in bed too late at night with too many thoughts rushing through their mind, suddenly realizes they've been praying. Baker was writing music about religion long before "Faith Healer." In a cathartic finale to her debut album "Sprained Ankle" (2015), a record marked by anxious spirals and thoughts of self-loathing, chords of the Christian hymn "In Christ Alone" sound on a rickety, out-of-tune piano interwoven with static and a preacher's sermon about the end of the world. Her second album, "Turn Out the Lights" (2017), features tracks like "Televangelist," in which Baker sings about how all her prayers are just apologies. "Little Oblivions" sees Baker question her faith more than ever — not whether she believes in God, as she openly identifies as Christian, but about what faith is and why anyone needs it in the first place. Perhaps, Baker forwards, we believe in God as a coping mechanism. It's an anxiety that anyone who has grappled with their religious beliefs will recognize well: What if my faith is just my drug of choice, so I don't have to face the world? What if it's just some means of not feeling alone? "Little Oblivions" forges a through line between addiction and holding on to a higher power, and explores how these two things might be the same. "There are so many channels and behaviors that we use to placate discomfort unhealthily which exist outside the formal definition of addiction," Baker said about the song "Faith Healer" in an interview with Under the Radar magazine. "I (and so many other people) are willing to believe whomever — a political pundit, a preacher, a drug dealer, an energy healer — when they promise healing." As real as her faith crisis is, however, so too is her crisis of addiction, and the album explicitly portrays the ups and downs of alcohol and drug dependency. Given the thought spirals, references to substance abuse and heaping amounts of existential dread, one might expect an album like "Little Oblivions" to have a mopey, indie-acoustic sound, similar to her "Sprained Ankle" debut. But even her earlier work, while more contemplative and forlorn, has always had this restrained electricity to it, a strangely upbeat pathos tensed and ready to spring. In "Little Oblivions," Baker finally lets this energy loose. After a long stretch of meandering piano and a guitar heavily doctored with reverb, track "Relative Fiction" suddenly breaks into a syncopated rhythm, building relentlessly until Baker declares, "I don't need a savior, I need you to take me home." Songs like "Faith Healer" and opening track "Hardline" seem to short-circuit under the immensity of their own instrumentation, their driving rhythms cutting in and out. "Ringside" is powered, beginning to end, by an unrelenting electric guitar. Add to all of this how often and unapologetically Baker switches between time signatures and musical textures mid-song, such as in "Bloodshot," and the album becomes intoxicating in its instability. At any moment, new riffs might intrude out of nowhere. Just as suddenly, the instrumentation might collapse.  Memphis-based singer-songwriter Julien Baker released her third album, 'Little Oblivions,' on Feb. 26. (Sub Pop Records/Nolan Knight) Some tracks on the album find Baker wondering if we use religion or abuse substances just so we don't have to deal with ourselves. In "Relative Fiction," Baker captures how questioning your system of morality also means questioning all the metrics you once used to evaluate whether you were "good" or not. "A character of somebody's invention, a martyr in another passion play," she sings, "I guess I don't mind losing my conviction if it's all relative fiction anyway." And in the track "Hardline," Baker's addiction lets her escape from nothing other than herself. After crossing that "hard line" she drew for herself and relapsing, she finds that her own reflection has vanished. "Say my own name in the mirror," she sings, and "nobody appears." Baker is at her vocal best in "Crying Wolf" for her characteristic fragile vibrato and in "Repeat" for her straining, even harsh, reach to the top of her register. Her vocal style has never been about perfection — Baker doubles her own voice in pointedly imperfect, out-of-sync unison in "Favor," a track where fans of boygenius can also hear Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus lend backup vocals — but rather about authenticity, singing plainly to get her point across. Without a doubt, Baker's music is charged and full of emotion. But at the same time, there still remains another opposing and measured side of her, where those rawer edges meet up with careful restraint. As a result, Baker sings not like she's about to cry, but rather, like she already has. She sings as though she has entered into the sharp-eyed, clear-minded state of calm that comes after breaking down, from where she can see everything with clarity and precision, even herself. Maybe even God. But if religion is just an addiction, only a vice or simply some way to avoid having to look at the messiness of who you truly are, then what is Baker supposed to do with all the evidence to the contrary? The most affecting moments of "Little Oblivions" are when Baker stumbles upon unexpected grace, encountering forgiveness for herself and her shortcomings that continually unfolds. "I wish you'd hurt me," Baker states, point-blank, in "Song in E," because "it's the mercy I can't take." If faith in God is really just a way of filling in the blank spaces, a way of entering into those little oblivions, then there's no way for Baker to explain the love and longsuffering demonstrated by those who stick around her — those people who, even as she struggles with addiction, choose to stay. "Nobody deserves a second chance," she sings, in "Ringside," but "I keep getting them." In an interview with The New Statesman, Baker expressed that she is "certain that there's something out there" — even if that something is only a "God manifested in the dignity of other human beings." Even through addiction, even through doubt, "Little Oblivions" locates divinity in the person standing beside you. "How come it's so much easier with anything less than human, letting yourself be tender?" Baker asks in "Favor," seeing her friend cup a dead moth in their hands. There is nothing more difficult than being vulnerable, except, perhaps, accepting those hands that reach out to hold you. "Who put me in your way to find?" Baker insists. "And what right had you, not to let me die?" In the end, for Baker, faith isn't a way to cope with life. Faith isn't about escape, and it isn't just another little oblivion. Faith is as much about letting yourself break down as it is about letting others help you up, cross over to that other side and write another song. |
| Woman Speaks Out About Growing Up In A Cult - LADbible Posted: 16 Mar 2021 02:24 PM PDT Imagine learning that everything you learned as a child was actually the teachings of a cult. That's exactly what happened to this woman, who has since opened up about some of her experiences. Watch her talk about it here: Elizabeth Hunter, 27, grew up in a strict religious community, where every part of her life was controlled by her father. Speaking to UNILAD, she said: "There was no TV in our house, we weren't allowed to watch movies or television shows. "We weren't allowed to listen to any contemporary or non-Christian music. I was not allowed to cut my hair. I was not allowed to wear makeup." Elizabeth was homeschooled and taught about the Bible, and essentially grew up learning how to be a good wife. When she was 17, she was already thinking about marriage.  She said: "I wasn't supposed to date or flirt with any guys because my dad was going to pick my husband. "And then all of my life skills were all about things I needed to be a good wife." Elizabeth explained that she learned how to bake bread, how to sew and how to play piano. She recalled: "So if my husband wanted me to play piano for the church, then I could play the piano for the church." Elizabeth grew up in Texas as part of Bill Gothard's IBLP cult, which stands for 'Institute in Basic Life Principles'. One of the main principles of the movement is the idea that everything in life is determined by the father of the family, which is part of its 'umbrella' of authority. She was taught that to go against that would result in physical punishment from God. She wasn't allowed to wear clothing with words on - her mother said this drew attention to her body, and she wasn't allowed to wear the colour green, as her dad didn't like it.  Elizabeth eventually realised that what she had been through was not a normal, healthy childhood. It was when she told a therapist about being tied to her sister with rope that she realised they had experienced child abuse, and came to understand that the religious group was actually a cult. Elizabeth is now 27 and lives a new life away from Texas where she is happy and thriving. Her social media raises awareness of cult lifestyles and offers help to those who have experienced similar things. Elizabeth said: "I do see myself as a cult survivor. It kind of started as a joke, to just like, talk about some funny things my parents said to me. "So I just started making TikToks to educate people about that.  "And just by having my story out there and just sharing that you don't have to let that abuse define you. "You can name it, you can tell people that it existed without covering it up. "But it will hopefully be healing for other people too, who have gone through that, that you can recover, you can move on and you can also be a better person." |
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