A simple guitar. A light piano. Sometimes you don’t have to reinvent the wheel in order to shine. Julien Baker effortlessly proves this with her second album, which appears on the label Matador. Here, the songwriter from Tennessee goes back to the basics without making it the slightest bit artificial. She’s well equipped with that voice of hers; youthful with a gripping purity. A voice that delineates the contours of stripped back, intimate folk. Recorded in the famous Ardent studios in her hometown of Memphis, Turn Out The Lights uses this album like a confessional. Without excessive heaviness, the American meditates on her own experiences, as well as those of the people close to her. And on her interior battles too… At only 22 years old, Julien Baker brings a disc that’s bursting with profound and sincere emotion into the world. An album that embraces the shadowed corners and the complex truth of human nature and psychic balance: expressing ones strongest emotions through music to better shed a little… light? © CM/Qobuz