Julien Baker has announced the release of new album called Little Oblivions. This is follow-up to 2017’s Turn Out the Lights and it’s out on February 26 via Matador. The first single to be shared off the new album is a song called “Faith Healer.”
Baker said of the new song:
“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. 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 counter intuitive 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.”
Listen to “Faith Healer” and watch a Daniel Henry–directed video below:
Baker recorded Little Oblivions in her hometown of Memphis, Tennessee with her Turn Out the Lights collaborators Calvin Lauber (who engineered the new album) and Craig Silvey (who mixed it).
Little Oblivions artwork & tracklist:
1. Hardline
2. Heatwave
3. Faith Healer
4. Relative Fiction
5. Crying Wolf
6. Bloodshot
7. Ringside
8. Favor
9. Song in E
10. Repeat
11. Highlight Reel
12. Ziptie