Roughly 40 minutes into our meeting, Julien Baker informs me we are having a “divine exchange”. Fixing my gaze and swirling a plastic coffee cup, she leans forward in the sun-drenched Nashville café where we’ve been talking about God and music, as droves of tourists in buses are dropped off outside. Perhaps taking my silence as discomfort, she retreats, eyes mildly panicked: “Sorry, I’m not saying that to be creepy and freak you out!”
At 22 years old, Baker is already one of the most acclaimed new singer-songwriters of recent years; her 2017 single “Claws in Your Back” was feted by The New York Times as one of the 25 songs “that tell us where music is going”, and the album it came from, Turn Out the Lights, was a fixture in best-of-the-year lists.
Her music has been described as “quiet and cool as a medieval cloister” and her eerily hushed concerts likened to church; attendees have been known to cry. She is sometimes called “emo” due to her sombre subject matter, but the music goes well beyond this, with almost hymnal vocals backed by simple guitar chords and the occasional piano. Think The National meets Liz Phair, or an early Cat Power.
