Julien Baker - Sprained Ankle, my god

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw-qbPq1y70

this is really good
but i'm not going to listen to this again
just to make a couple references to things i listened to when i was younger and more prone to want to wallow in my own sadness

(this is not to say this is stylistically the same this is way more 00s indie/post-emo)

but it reminds me of the first elliot smith album and a lot of the songs: ohia/magnolia electric co. in that it's the type of music that wants to "pull you under" so to speak and i think she's good and talented but nope nope nope

niels, she has a handful of dates in Belgium, UK, Spain and Germany at the end of May listed here: https://www.facebook.com/julienrbaker/app/308540029359/

great news!

the type of music that wants to "pull you under" so to speak and i think she's good and talented but nope nope nope
so damn otm (but yes yes yes)

yeah i get the same feeling as ums, which is why i've listened to this album approximately 3 times in total

it's amazing still

Also obv I hope there is more distance between her and her work than the two I mentioned

this album, my god

Do you think that there's a way I could ever get too far
That you'd ask me where I'd been
Like I ask you where you are?

UK and European tour dates!

https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xta1/v/t1.0-9/12687879_1285637934785433_2776795949432720901_n.jpg?oh=2323eb2ed0cbe599271431545a3fe63a&oe=57669B12

I guess I'll have to go on a small vacation - anyone happen to know that one of these venues is particularly great?

was talking to a friend abt this record - we both feel there's an age specifity to some of the emotions Baker expresses, and at first this made us appreciate the record from a distance, but then it pulls you in, and suddenly it's like being a teenager again, let's you access some p strong emotions

(not sure if I'm expressing myself clearly, certainly don't want it to come off as patronizing)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxTjko70fBg

whoa thanks for posting! i jsut watched the full concert vid and they mentioned east coast tour, which i didn't know about :)

New song for NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts. It's sad and pretty, like all the others

http://www.npr.org/2016/03/04/469247254/julien-baker-tiny-desk-concert?autoplay=true

yeeeees she's coming to Aarhus in May!

Been a long time since a debut from a singer-songwriter hit me this hard

I drove from Mississippi to Nashville to see her a week or two ago, because I feel the same way. Her record reminds of when the first Smiths record came out when I was a teenager. Not that it sounds anything like the Smiths, but there is that same feeling that this person is articulating emotions that I have felt. You could have heard a pin drop while she was playing, she had the room in the palm of her hand, although her between-song banter was self-deprecating and funny.

Aside from the lyrics, I love how the music is sooooooo spare and spartan: she gets an awful lot out of one or two chords and a delay pedal. In that regard, it reminds me of the very early Durutti Column records, if they were slowed and stripped down even further.

The musical side of it is so perfect, just can't imagine these songs any other way.

I'm probably just gonna keep bumping this thread until every song from the album has been posted here b/c I love them all

No idea how I made it so long without posting this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSgWPJy01es

evan have you seen her live yet

Nope, seeing her in a few weeks in Madison. Super excited but also nervous to revisit all these songs from the darkest point of my life in a public place.

In all the live videos she somehow sounds just as good as she does on the album so I have pretty high hopes.

yeah i saw her in san francisco last month. it was tremendous. pin drop quiet

i get some nina nastasia vibes from her occasionally but she's very much her own thing

yeah i saw her in san francisco last month. it was tremendous. pin drop quiet

Saw her a second time a couple of weeks ago in a small venue that's usually full of noisy drunk people, but she does get people to shut up and pay attention.

Leaving aside the lyrics, within the self-imposed box of the minimal style she has chosen to employ on this album, she is really a tremendous guitar player with a great sense of dynamics.

I showed "sprained ankle" to one of my students on Tuesday and he had already recorded a cover by Thursday

I can't believe how young she is. Up with Julia Holter as a major new player in Americsn music

uh i dont really put em in the same building tho

also julia holter has been recording for a minute

ur gonna run

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlVp9W6LvTQ

Seeing her soon and stoked! I predict crying in public!

ok i covered sprained ankle, too
https://soundcloud.com/matthewmathieu/sprained-ankle-julien-baker

^^^^that is awesome.

http://www.stereogum.com/1869199/julien-baker-the-ballad-of-big-nothing-elliott-smith-cover/mp3s/

Excellent show last night. Kind of an eerie moment when, after taking in the entire set in stone silence, the crowd worked up the courage to start singing along with "Something."

holy shit there were a ton of people at her Minneapolis show on Friday. where are people talking about her besides here?

Seems like a situation where people are just gradually converted as they discover her. Glad I caught a club show; I wouldn't be surprised if she's playing theaters by the time she tours behind her next album

Amazing live. Also it was my first time trying MDMA (in slightly too small a dose, I think), which made it extra nice.

i'm seeing her tonight! no mdma tho.

Again marveling at what a remarkable feat this album is. Over the last six months nearly every track on it has been my favorite at some point (most recently I landed on "Good News" as the clear standout, but that could change). Can't think of a recent record that unfolded and grew on me at such a systematic pace. I never burn out on the record, because every time I think I've finally tapped it dry, a different song starts speaking to me.

Ack, jesus christ speak of the devil

http://www.stereogum.com/1874106/watch-julien-baker-sing-good-news-with-sharon-van-etten-in-nyc/video/

i saw her and it was remarkable, really could hear a pindrop (except for the creaky-ass floor at the venue... at one point someone near the front needed to go to the washroom or something, and she walked away, and it was SO LOUD)

after seeing her live, rejoice absolutely jumped out, what a song

saw her live friday, absolutely amazing - entire show was a highlight but "everybody does", "good news", "blacktop" and "go home" stood out for me, eyes welling up

quickly ran into her later and she came off as the nicest person, as she also does in recent piece published on p4k

while the songs feel very contemporary to me in their intimacy, I couldn't help but feel they could become part of the western cannon same way as dylan/joni/browne/townes/etc's stuff

bury me with this album

NPR is streaming her set at Newport. Starts a bit slow but it's great
http://www.npr.org/event/music/488354526/julien-baker-live-in-concert-newport-folk-2016

Signed to Matador, no shock there. "Funeral Pyre" is a bruiser.

Do you reckon we'll get a second album this year following the Matador signing? I really hope so.

seconded

I think there's a very good chance of that happening, yeah

Funeral Pyre sounds great

Wonder if she'll record with a band now she's on a bigger label

Kind of reminds me of hearing Because I Was In Love for the first time and appreciating that this is a songwriter who will probably go on to make better records, but will probably never make one this raw and pure again

― Evan R, jueves 5 de noviembre de 2015 20:51 (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ha! I was just talking about this with a friend yesterday. She's 21 I think? She certainly has the potential talent to continue doing even better music but as she gets older it's a given that sensitive types of singers get a bit burnt down and they stop delivering heavily emotional performances. Most I've seen become more tired, more cynical or simply start becoming more obsessed about layering sounds in the studio instead of raw performances.

I don't think she'll ever be as

Whoa pushed submit by accident. Anyways watch her live while you can!

I listened to "Sprained Ankle" the other week and it almost broke me in half

I like the song, but love the video.

her previous work never really clicked with me but the new album is sounding good, really like her arrangements

her new work still is not clicking with me. I don't like the arrangements :(

maybe it's just that her vox and lyrics are so big and intense on their own that even relatively small additions feel to me like a hat on a hat, just a giant stack of self-loathing hats

I've had this on repeat in the background while I'm working, and at that level I like it but only a few songs have made me pause to see what their titles are. In general it sounds a lot like Turn Out the Lights, with the arrangements a natural progression from that album's fuller sound. I like her a lot, but also I think she's kind of a great sound in search of great songs. More songwriting collaborations would be good for her imo.

I think my other problem, and this might just be me, is that the lyrics tip over into a level of pain and self-loathing where I honestly just start to worry whether this level of public emotional exposure is healthy or even safe, especially since she seems to get more raw and specific with each release (and has grown in commercial stature with each one). like, I'm not in recovery but I have friends who are, and imagining them putting themselves "out there" to this extent makes my stomach churn

Yeah, I admire her candor and also hope this is all catharsis rather than crisis.

Another song just registered for me. Maybe if I listen to it all weekend they'll differentiate themselves.

is it a pixies track that favor rips at the beginning?

sounds a bit like "Gigantic" maybe

hmm i think that's why i thought of pixies but i think there's something else out there that's closer to it that isn't a pixies track i guess

"here comes your man"? that's the track that comes to mind, but only because i'm listening specifically for a pixies reference. having said that, i get more of a sebadoh vibe from those opening notes

still not all the way into this album, but "Repeat" is pretty great. in a super grim way.

A ton of great melodies on this album, and the lyrics are raw, effective, and gutting, but the production and recording sounds quite muddied and leaves me wanting throughout. Still one of the better American indie-rock records I've heard this year.

great live show!! Her voice is amazing and her band rips and she seems like a really cool person!!!

sorry for xasanthur style post