American songwriter and guitarist Julien Baker has announced the release of a new album called Little Oblivions which will be out on February 26th, 2021 via Matador Records. According to the press release, it is a transformative sonic shift from Baker’s more spare and intimate previous work. “Faith Healer” is the first excerpt.
“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 a while, 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.”
Watch the official video below.