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Julien Baker Announces Little Oblivions, Shares ‘Faith Healer’

Julien Baker

Julien Baker has just shared a glimpse of what will be coming from her upcoming third album, Little Oblivions.

Directed by Daniel Henry, the video for “Faith Healer” shows empty rooms filled with things, an ongoing brawl between two people and individuals who are left alone to their own devices. And while all of that splashes across your screen, Baker appears singing.

She explains the meaning betwen the song below:

“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 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. 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.”

Little Oblivions was recorded in Memphis between December 2019 and this past January.

Earlier this year, Hayley Williams released “Roses/Lotus/Violet/Iris” featuring Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus — also known as boygenius — off her new album, Petals for Armor. She also did a virtual performance at the Newport Folk Festival this summer.

Little Oblivions releases on Feb. 26, 2021 via Matador Records. See the tracklisting below.

01. “Hardline”
02. “Heatwave”
03. “Faith Healer”
04. “Relative Fiction”
05. “Crying Wolf”
06. “Bloodshot”
07. “Ringside”
08. “Favor”
09. “Song in E”
10. “Repeat”
11. “Highlight Reel”
12. “Ziptie”