Julien Baker announces new album Little Oblivions, shares “Faith Healer”

Julien Baker will return with her third album, Little Oblivions, next year. The first single “Faith Healer” is out now, and it finds the singer-songwriter taking musical risks while exploring addiction, escapism, and healing.

“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,” says Baker. “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 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,” she adds. “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.”

Baker wrote, recorded, and self-produced Little Oblivions after taking a break from her intense touring schedule to finish her college degree. This period of reflection and renewal inspired Baker to expand her typical sparse sound and infuse her musical storytelling with honest, autobiographical experiences and observations.

Little Oblivions comes out February 26 via Matador Records. Watch the “Faith Healer” video, directed by Daniel Henry, below.