Julien Baker - B-Sides EP Music Album Reviews

Julien Baker - B-Sides EP Music Album Reviews
Three tracks from the singer-songwriter’s Little Oblivions sessions further detail her dread, suffering, and sadness with great beauty and little reprieve.

Julien Baker’s music is all calamity. Scenes of suffering are laid so bare that they seem to serve as confessionals, a way of unburdening them while seeking higher ground. Dating back to her 2015 debut, Sprained Ankle, Baker has depicted emotional wreckage in excruciating detail, recalling weekday mornings blackout drunk or lonely conversations with a god she’s not sure she still believes in. Baker’s been open about her mental health struggles and history of substance abuse, but her songs need no out-of-frame context to land their gut punches. On last year’s Little Oblivions, her raw sound was blown out dramatically, adding piano, distorted drums, and banjo to her songs of self-destruction. It’s a gorgeous and impressive record, a gauntlet to get through. Baker’s voice conveys such anguish that even when her writing includes traces of optimism, her despair is deep enough to drown in.

The three songs on her new B-Sides EP were recorded during the Little Oblivions sessions and, apart from the acoustic guitar-backed “Guthrie,” could slot right into the album. In fact, “Vanishing Point” and “Mental Math” would have been indie-pop standouts on Little Oblivions. She’s at her most undone on “Vanishing Point,” turning off the headlights in her car, wishing to be “impaled on the pass.” Baker ends the song on a long-suffering note: “Don’t feel bad, I’ve always been too far down to rеach/And I was long, long gone before you got to me.” A devastating admission, to be sure, but there’s a certain clarity that comes only by wringing yourself dry.

The EP’s other highlight, “Mental Math,” describes a relationship on life support. Over a double guitar riff and four-on-the-floor kick, Baker balances quiet revelations (“You say you never had a good night's sleep/Any of the nights you spent with me”) with jarring images (“Hanging on a ledge, outside of your house/Trying not to freak out, staring at the ground/Doing math in my head, how far is it down?”). All the while, Baker’s narrator scrutinizes her motives and actions, identifying pride and a lack of patience as barriers to connection. Like Little Oblivions, the songs on B-Sides EP sound like snapshots from the most difficult day of your life, overwrought yet moving elegies about surviving through what almost killed you.

Even across three songs, Baker’s lack of levity is draining. On Sprained Ankle and Turn Out the Lights, moments of humor occasionally opened a porthole to redemption, offering a glimpse into a space unburdened by totalizing pain. B-Sides EP is less forgiving. “Used to call upon the spirit, now I think heaven lets it ring/Wanted so bad to be good/But there's no such thing,” she concludes on the brutally sad “Guthrie.” Without resilience, these songs can sag into themselves, but this isn’t music meant for direct-line healing. Baker’s songwriting captures the feeling of being at the bottom, where language fails and every thought hurts—a place that probably feels a little like oblivion.

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About Wanni Arachchige Udara Madusanka Perera

Hey, I'm Perera! I will try to give you technology reviews(mobile,gadgets,smart watch & other technology things), Automobiles, News and entertainment for built up your knowledge.
Julien Baker - B-Sides EP Music Album Reviews Julien Baker - B-Sides EP Music Album Reviews Reviewed by Wanni Arachchige Udara Madusanka Perera on August 02, 2022 Rating: 5

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