Album reviews: Stunning record from Julien Baker, impressive debut from Irish producer Sal Dulu
American singer Julien Baker, and Dublin producer Sal Dulu.
Memphis songwriter Julien Baker has to date been overshadowed by her friend and occasionally bandmate Phoebe Bridgers. But she is sure to join Bridgers in the top tier of alternative pop with her stunning third record – a visceral rumination on addiction and personal crisis that proceeds from pile-driving angst to moments of grace and hard-won optimism.
This is a wrenching descent but you’ll want to stay with all the way with Baker, who at moments shares the dream/ nightmare duality of pop star Billie Eilish. Sometimes her vocals are a dead ringer for Eilish’s too.
Baker presents a fascinating study in contradictions. She’s a queer American Southerner who believes in Jesus (though she no longer describes herself as Christian). Her music is likewise many things at once: opener Hardline bracingly confronts her struggle with alcohol against a wave of crashing, churning guitars while Heatwave and Faith Healer drip with honesty as the music works itself up to a howl.
Lyrically, she doesn’t hold back. “Knocked out on a weekend/Would you hit me this hard if I were a boy?” she coos on Hardline; “I wish that I drank because of you and not only because of me,” she adds on Song In E It’s cathartic but hugely compelling – and sure to reinforce Baker’s credentials as one of the outstanding chroniclers of Gen Z angst.
A darkly-dreaming otherworldliness infuses the work of Dublin producer Sal Dulu. On Xompulse, Dulu shifts between genres as if in the grip of an out-of-body experience, jazz bleeding into ambient pop, hip-hop bars bristling alongside indie shoe gaze.
With so much chucked in, his debut album unfolds like a tour of the kitchen sink at the end of the world. Still, it’s far from a mess, with Dulu proving an adept splicer of genres. He’s a talented collaborator to boot, and the record moves into a different gear welcoming rappers Fly Anakin, staHHr and Koncept Jack$on.
“Xompulse” is a made-up word Dulu describes as “the transition from not feeling good in myself to feeling that I have a purpose because I have this music”. He gives voice to that purpose over the course of a lockdown listen that radiates menace but which ultimately cracks open the shutters and makes the world feel that little wilder and weirder.
