Julien Baker's brand of sad rock 'n' roll reflects Memphis roots and a self-awareness all her own

A few weeks ago, 20-year-old Julien Baker turned in an English paper to her professor titled, "Voltaire's Apparatus: Hope and Human Nature in Candide." The only problem? She actually sent it to her manager. In addition to studying English full time at Middle Tennessee State University, Baker has released a critically acclaimed debut album, Sprained Ankle, and toured across the country in the few short months since the record has been out.

Just last year, the Memphis native was posting an EP to Bandcamp, the tracks written mainly for herself as a creative outlet to fill the void left by her high school band, Forrister, while its members were living in different places. Now a Google search rings up interviews with Nylon, Stereogum, Vulture and AbsolutePunk, as well as enthusiastic reviews from the likes of NPR, Pitchfork and The New York Times. It's no wonder she's mixed up a few assignments.

The coverage is well-deserved. Sprained Ankle consists of nine gorgeous, wrenching songs, most of them sparsely accompanied by a lone electric guitar. They culminate in the glorious, gospel-inflected "Go Home," the story of a young woman trapped by addictions and fears who laments with brutal candor, "I know you're still worried I'm gonna get scared again and make my insides clean with the kitchen bleach / I've kissed enough bathroom sinks to make up for the lovers who never loved me."

With lines like that, it's no surprise that Baker is as wise and self-aware as they come at 20 years old. She's aware of the narrative that has already started to take shape around her — that of the reckless young girl who rehabbed herself with a bunch of sad songs, a "broken artist trope." She's afraid of being self-indulgent when she's constantly asked the same questions: How do you write such personal songs? Is it hard to perform them live?

"Yeah, it is, you know? It's strange to open yourself that much," she says. "Now I think just having to sing such sad songs every night has helped to callus that and give me a better handle on approaching art as an exercise and not reliving those emotions all the time."

There are a fair amount of emotions to relive. She grew up in the Memphis punk scene, covering Fall Out Boy on a guitar in her room and wondering what it'd be like to be a "real" musician, even as she played house shows with Forrister. She says she felt vulnerable then, panicky even as she screamed her frustrations into songs with her bandmates behind her.

Baker has also been candid about prior problems with substance abuse, as well as the struggles of being an openly gay Christian in the South. God is a frequent character on Sprained Ankle, but less the warm, bland God of Christian radio than a God who sometimes doesn't answer, who sometimes feels awfully far away — a God of desperation and loneliness. She's reluctant to talk too much about this God in press — her music isn't a pedestal for that sort of thing.

"But at the same time I want to be really open about it, because there's so many things about my life that would have turned me off from faith if I didn't know there were other people that were able to reconcile it," Baker says. "Like, being homosexual, I want to be able to say to other people: These two aren't mutually exclusive."

Less than a year ago she was a student first and musician second. Starting next semester, that will change as she takes some time off from school, sustaining a few online courses while she tours the U.S. and later in 2016, abroad. Before she heads out in January, she'll play Exit/In Dec. 16 as part of a show in support of Bernie Sanders.

Though she says she's in a better place now, Baker often thinks about the "reckless hooligan," as she self-deprecatingly describes herself, that she was in her teens. She says she'd take a time machine back to her 16-year-old self if she could, to tell her not to "crawl in a hole and be really self-destructive."

But if she had, the earnest honesty that makes Baker such a compelling singer and songwriter might not have emerged. When her alto cracks with emotion, when her voice strains during a harsh narrative moment, it's the unpolished sign of something special.

"I want to grab her shoulders," Baker says, "and be like, 'You have to stick it out. There's a reason, I promise.' "

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