The world of music adores artists that are seemingly beyond their years – Låpsley, SOAK, Lorde – each has their own unique appeal. But none of those artists have managed to create intimately visceral narratives to the point of worry that Julien Baker has crafted on Sprained Ankle.
Sprained Ankle marks Baker’s official debut release on 6131 Records, an effort that reveals the nineteen year-old Memphis native’s matter of fact assertions of wishing “I could write songs about anything other than death.” A slightly alarming statement coming from someone of her age, Baker weaves private thoughts into vividly bleak accounts of nurses administering sedatives and awaiting the subsequent unconsciousness on “Brittle Bones.” Including lines like “I’m so good at hurting myself,” it begins to paint a perspective of Baker’s intense awareness of the frailty of life.
Tender and inward, Baker’s earnest soprano floats above guitar loops that at certain points actually resemble heartbeats over a rhythm base. Songs like “Good News” really start to give the most barren look into Baker’s psyche: “I know its not important / But it is to me / And I’m only ever screaming at myself in public.” She offers up her startling self-awareness in a poignant manner, and while for others such honesty might be be exultant, for Baker it's unexpected to the point it could frighten some. But that’s the beauty of this record; such fragile narratives offered up by someone so unassuming allows her lyricism to cut to the marrow of anyone listening.
Sprained Ankle ends on a somber note, with a song about addiction (of whose its hard to tell) in “Rejoice,” that offers thinly veiled anger like “Call the blue lights / Curse your name,” and uncertainty, “I think there’s a god / I think he hears either way.” Baker’s detached vocals create an intense empathetic aspect to the track and album as a whole. The album ends with the aptly named “Go Home,” which presents Baker at her least self-conscious yet most apologetic with “Burned out on the edge of the highway / I’m sorry for asking please come take me home.” Being so young and so incredibly mindful of the personal nature of the album, “Go Home” acts as a firm completion of this harrowing announcement of her existence, an end to the first installment of Baker’s emotional outpouring, and a return to solace until the next cathartic release.
Baker’s songwriting is peculiar in the fact that it acts as a sort of a misdirect. Without taking much consideration of the songs, one might assume Baker has an oddly morose outlook on life, with so much focus on the desolate motifs and dying nature of life, however, it should be argued, it actually acts as a foil to that thought. Sprained Ankle presents the unnerving realities of life in an ambient sense, as a sort of celebration of living and having the awareness of knowing this could be the only chance to do so. In turn, it creates one of the most powerful debut records of 2015, and likely the inception of a more fertile and durable career than that of Baker’s counterparts.