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The inspiration for Small oversights Two years ago, Nashville-based singer-songwriter Julien Baker appeared in a GQ magazine about musicians who quit drinking and taking drugs for a sober life.
Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler recalled a half-hearted detox trip where he spent his time listening Exile on the main street (“This was not the moment that made me sober”). The Eagles’ Joe Walsh criticized the “unholy and hateful thing” in which the cocaine did it. Meanwhile, Baker, who was 23 at the time, was reflecting on a difficult teenage phase. “I haven’t been drinking or using drugs in, let’s see, six years,” she says.
But his carefully worded statement was a lie. The singer had fallen off the wagon while touring in 2018 with Boygenius, the group she formed with fellow freelance singer-songwriters Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus. Seeing his sober fake self in the pages of GQ making a solemn confession to find “a better way to live” has caused a shock of non-recognition. She started writing the songs for Small oversights this month.
This is his third album, and also his most developed musically. Its predecessors, the 2015 Twisted ankle and 2017 Turn off the lights, were stripped-down affairs arranged around guitar and vocals. This one seems to have been done with a full band. But the impression of several musicians is a studio illusion. Baker played almost all the instruments and produced it herself. (Sound engineer Calvin Lauber also contributed a few instrumental parts.)
“Blackened on a weekday” are the opening words whispered by Baker on the album. A thick layer of warped chords press, like waking up with a hangover. The drums cut through the fog and the voices became more lively. The song, “Hardline”, doesn’t hang around the moping. But neither is it moving towards an orderly conclusion. Instead, the music vibrates with intensity, like a beautifully orchestrated beat. “I can see where this is going, but I can’t find the brake,” sings Baker.
The cycle of addiction spins through the other songs, all sung in the first person. “Song in E” finds Baker face down on the carpet of an empty apartment. In “Highlight Reel”, she passed out in the back of a cab. The story of rehabilitation is retained. The musical dynamics remain based on inflated and descending textures rather than arcs.
The songs have a static quality but their arrangements are subtly layered, like the booming guitar solo and shimmering reverb of “Crying Wolf”. What may sound like conventional indie rock looks fantastic, studio-designed, full of depth and detail. Baker sighs and insults his lyrics, like a lazy man with words, but the vocal melodies are lively and the lyrics are well crafted. There is some sort of resolution here, but not the variety of recovery memories.
★★★★ ☆
‘Small oversights‘is published by Matador
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