Singer-songwriter Julien Baker has announced a new album titled Little Oblivions. The follow-up to 2017 sophomore LP Turn Out the Lights is due out February 26 via Matador, and was recorded in Baker’s hometown of Memphis, Tennessee.
Baker produced the record herself, with Turn Out the Lights collaborators Calvin Lauber and Craig Silvey returning to engineer and mix the album respectively.
Coinciding with the announcement is a new song from Baker titled ‘Faith Healer’, which arrives alongside a Daniel Henry-directed video.
“Put most simply, I think that “Faith Healer” is a song about vices, both the obvious and the more insidious ways that they show up in the human experience. I started writing this song 2 years ago and it began as a very literal examination of addiction,” explained Baker in a statement.
“For awhile, I only had the first verse, which is just a really candid confrontation of the cognitive dissonance a person who struggles with substance abuse can feel—the overwhelming evidence that this substance is harming you, and the counterintuitive but very real craving for the relief it provides. When I revisited the song I started thinking about the parallels between the escapism of substance abuse and the other various means of escapism that had occupied a similar, if less easily identifiable, space in my psyche.
“There are so many channels and behaviors that we use to placate discomfort unhealthily which exist outside the formal definition of addiction. 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, and how that willingness, however genuine, might actually impede healing.”
Though Baker’s last solo record was Turn Out the Lights, she’s released a string of standalone singles like ‘Distant Solar Systems’ and ‘Tokyo’ over the last few years. She also released the self-titled debut EP as part of her Boygenius project with Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus.
Watch the video for ‘Faith Healer’ below.
