(Illustration by Jamiel Law)
I can’t remember exactly when it was, but I do know that the first time I heard Julien Baker sing it was live, in one of those medium-sized concert halls in Brooklyn where I spent many of the best nights of my 20s. It was 2016, I was a year out of college, and I’m pretty sure I was there with my roommate Celia, who had an extra ticket. The opener was something loud, unrestrained, boppy, and I wasn’t totally sure what to expect when Baker stepped out onstage with her rainbow-strapped guitar.
A lot of profiles of Baker emphasize her diminutive size and her relative youth, in part because it serves to underscore the absolute miracle that is her sound. So here: Baker is small, five-foot-nothing, but her voice is so, so big. She is young, just 21 years old that night, but her voice contains years of experience: it is achingly tender, terribly sad, plaintive on the edge of raw. Another thing that profiles do is talk about her audiences. It’s like church, they might say. Hundreds of people, hushed and hanging on her every word, faces turned up to the stage. They’re not wrong.
I want to tell you what everyone else says a Julien Baker show is like so you’ll have an idea, so you can imagine yourself there in these church crowds, so you can see someone who is performing like she’s on the edge of the high dive. I love having the excuse and the proof of everyone else, because to tell you what listening to Julien Baker is like for me would be like letting you into a quiet, small part of myself that shies away from the light.
