NPR Posts Up Full Julien Baker Set at Newport Folk Festival

Julien Baker

NPR has released a live recording of Julien Baker’s performance at the Newport Folk Festival.

At Newport Folk, the 20-year-old Memphian filled the quad inside Fort Adams with plaintive folk songs and electric guitar. Midway through her set, Baker brought out Matthew Gilliam, her bandmate in Forrister, to add touches of atmospheric percussion to “Vessels” and “Brittle Boned.” But for the most part, it was just her ragged-edged voice and ringing Telecaster — and that was enough to win over the audience, who gave her multiple standing ovations. Particularly well received was “Good News,” which, as Baker explained, is about “thinking you ruin everything … and then figuring out that you don’t.”

Julien Baker Believes in God

Julien Baker

Rachel Syme, writing for The New Yorker, with a really great piece on Julien Baker:

There is equal humility and precocity to these statements, a duality that kept popping up in my conversation with Baker. She called me “ma’am” with a soft drawl, and apologized often when talking about her creative process, worrying that she was being “conceited or indulgent.” Onstage, she offers aw-shucks-ish disclaimers before launching into particularly gloomy refrains, saying, “I’m sorry for bumming everyone out.” At shows, she sometimes wears a T-shirt that says “Sad Songs Make Me Feel Better.” And yet, despite any outward embarrassment, Baker’s lyrics are bold and unapologetic—about having big, bloody emotions, about the kind of epic feels that come in tsunamis and do not abate. Though Baker sings about God, she is not explicitly a Christian artist; instead, whether or not a supreme being exists is just one of many questions she has about the way the world works, and about the mechanisms available to us to process pain.

Interview: Julien Baker

Julien Baker

I had the opportunity to speak with the extremely humble and extremely talented Julien Baker about her recent album, Sprained Ankle. We covered everything from the album’s recording to spirituality and, naturally, we nerded out over David Bazan. Baker is a young songwriter with a lot to say, and luckily for all of us, it seems her career is only just beginning.

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