grooving through: vol. 2
This week: Julien Baker & Courtney Barnett.
I have 244 (yeah, there’s a new one since last week) records. Some, I bought; some, Jake bought; others were hand-me-downs.
Every week, I’m going to listen to 5 of them, A-Z, and tell you what I think. It’s music writing, but it’s also about memory, feeling, discovery, and looking back at what we love most. I’ll mostly dive into my favorite of the week and write a few sentences about the others — but anything goes, so who’s to say?
I’m not skipping a single LP: the mountain of Billy Joel records we got from my mom, the video game soundtrack, the used-bookstore impulse buys.
Let’s get spinning.
(This week: feel free to check out my appropriately-timed review of the new Julien Baker x Torres record on Pitchfork.)
Julien Baker - Sprained Ankle (2015)
I’m happy to not feel this pain anymore, to rarely tap into Sprained Ankle. I find something in all of the boygenius members’ discographies, but Baker’s feels the furthest from me now.
That’s not to say it doesn’t rip my fucking heart out.
I have a playlist called Ow; the description is “like that scene in black swan where she pulls at her cuticle & all the skin comes up.” That’s what this entire album is for me.
Sprained Ankle feels adolescent, pained, singular. Baker sounds lonely on the record, in part because of the spare instruments and in part because of her raw, echoing voice. There’s a lot of what I’m calling a tangible screlt (not derogatory): “Just let the parking lot swallow me up” or “To make up for the lovers that never loved me” sound like they hurt.
In the empty space, her keening is all that more powerful. On an older-person listen, it’s maybe a little thin as a record. But as a first effort, it’s stunning in pure emotion.
How I got it: Not sure if it was State College or Brooklyn
When I first listened to it: Either junior or senior year of college
Julien Baker - Turn Out the Lights (2017)
I had just found out the previous night that a loved one was very sick, and I was boarding a NJTransit bus (which was replacing the train) for a bumpy ride into Manhattan. I sat in a window seat and turned on Turn Out the Lights for the first time.
I never stood a chance.
Baker’s sophomore record is significantly more produced, and supremely successful for that. At the first moment, a piano intro tinkles in. Then violin enters. You can feel it: a larger vision. More momentum coming from something besides her own voice.
Her reckonings are more explicit: “There’s a comfort in failure, singing too loud in church.” I always feel visceral pain with “Claws in Your Back.”
If you listen to one song on this record, tune in to the twisted hope on “Appointments”: “Maybe it’s all gonna turn out alright/And I know that it’s not, but I have to believe that it is.” She lifts up that last line in a layered vocal, building, insistent and choral and yearning.
How I got it: Purchased in Brooklyn, no clue where — but it’s orange!
When I first listened to it: On an NJTransit bus, when the train was down, from Rockland County into Manhattan (after which I’d take the subway to DUMBO, to work at Northside Media (RIP))
Courtney Barnett - Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit (2015)
Jumping up and down in my friend’s poster-walled attic bedroom, freshly 20, I scream-sang, “I’m a Scorpio!”
The rollicking, electric chorus of “Pedestrian at Best” is so core to the angsty overachiever: “Put me on a pedestal, and I’ll only disappoint you/Tell me I’m exceptional, I promise to exploit you.”
I can’t say loudly enough: this record is the pinnacle of Barnett’s lyricism.
Sometimes I Sit and Think has two modes: we’re either meandering, bleary and hot, through August, or we’re crackling with high-intensity, frustrated rock. You spend a lot of time waiting for something to happen — and when it does, it’s all-consuming.
I’ve always loved Barnett’s talk-singing, how she outraces her melodies with densely-paced lines. They feels bracingly honest and obsessed with tedium, uplifting dull tasks (like making pyramids out of Coke cans) with interest and imbuing significance on the most mundane (she literally sings “I much prefer the mundane” on her earlier EP).
A great example is “Depreston.” She tours a house that’s for sale and looks at the pressed metal ceilings, the garden. Then, sees the minutiae of its previous inhabitant, and imagines their uses. Suddenly, she “can’t think of floorboard anymore/Whether the front room faces south or north.” She finds herself reckoning with the reality of all those remembrances and tchotchkes left in the home: it becomes more about replacing someone’s history with your own. (Wryly, she repeats: “If you’ve got a spare half a million/You could knock it down and start rebuilding.”)
How I got it: State College or Brooklyn
When I first listened to it: Sophomore year of college, but endlessly junior year of college
Courtney Barnett - Tell Me How You Really Feel (2018)
In a true inter-newsletter crossover episode, I saw Courtney perform this record with Julien Baker as an opener (Vagabon, too) in Prospect Park. The poster is on our wall.
I remember the Tell Me How You Really Feel roll-out. Post-Sometimes, Barnett had a lot of momentum in the US (she’s Australian) and her PR was working. I went to a pop-up in Meatpacking; it was a room full of projections and red rotary phones and other baubles.
On this one, Courtney goes electric. (A much smoother transition than when Bob did it.) It’s a bit of a rock interlude in her discography.
It has a foreboding opening — we start with that meandering guitar line we know so well, but it’s electrified, and ascends into wails and feedback. We have the snarky, biting “Charity” (“You must be having so much fun/Everything’s amaaaaazing).”
We also have her interpolation of the Margaret Atwood (whom I somehow interviewed?) quote, “Men are scared that women will laugh at them/Women are scared that men will kill them.” She adds brutally, “I hold my keys between my fingers.” Even with measured verses, the explosive chorus always gave me that stomp-the-streets defiant feeling. And that’s a powerful place to be.
How I got it: Psychic Records in Brooklyn; a streaky purple record with a silver-Sharpie signed cover?!
When I first listened to it: The minute it came out
Courtney Barnett - Things Take Time, Take Time (2021)
I interviewed Courtney about this record.
On her previous record, Barnett sang, “Tell me how you really feel/I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know anything.”
Here, we hear a much slower, more measured thought: “Takes me a while to show how I really feel.”
She fell in love, and it’s back — that softer (mostly!) sound from Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit. But it has more presence, like the experience on Tell Me How You Really Feel kicked her vocals to the front of everything.
I already wrote up this record at that link above, so I’ll stick to my surface thoughts here:
It’s glowing with love and admiration
It feels wiser than Sometimes, even though the sound is so close
It comes across nostalgic, gentle, or hopeful depending on the stage of love she’s in
How I got it: Maybe Byrdland in DC; maybe her website — it’s baby blue
When I first listened to it: As an advance, before I wrote up the record