Julien Baker’s upcoming album Little Oblivions opens with the song “Hardline,” which Baker has shared today. Like the singles that preceded it, the new song shows Baker taking leaps with her arrangements, working dramatic organ hits and other new-to-her sounds into the hugely climactic, sometimes post-rock-like track.
Baker says of the video she also released for the song:
“A few years ago I started collecting travel ephemera again with a loose idea of making a piece of art with it. I had been touring pretty consistently since 2015 and had been traveling so much that items like plane tickets and hotel keycards didn’t have much novelty anymore. So I saved all my travel stuff and made a little collage of a house and a van out of it. I wanted to incorporate it into the record and when we were brainstorming ideas for videos we came across Joe Baughman and really liked his work so we reached out with the idea of making a stop-motion video that had similar aesthetic qualities as the house I built did. I don’t know why I have the impulse to write songs or make tiny sculptures out of plane tickets. But here it is anyway: a bunch of things I’ve collected and carried with me that I’ve re-organized into a new shape.”
Baughman also notes of the visual, “Even after having spent 600 hours immersed in ‘Hardline’ and having listened to it thousands of times, I am still moved by it. It was a fun and ambitious challenge creating something that could accompany such a compelling song. The style of the set design, inspired by a sculpture that Julien created, was especially fun to work in. I loved sifting through magazines, maps, and newspapers from the 60s and 70s and finding the right colors, shapes, and quotes to cover almost every surface in the video.”
Watch the “Hardline” video above.
Little Oblivions is out 2/26 via Matador Records. Pre-order it here.
