Turn Out the Lights

Julien Baker - Turn Out the Lights
Critic Score
Based on 33 reviews
2017 Ratings: #57 / 940
Year End Rank: #22
User Score
Based on 743 ratings
2017 Rank: #146
Liked by 94 people
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CRITIC REVIEWS

100
Upset
‘Turn Out the Lights’ is above all driven by a sorrowful defiance in the face of life’s hardships, and in Julien Baker’s earnest delivery and parse songwriting these feelings have found a unique vessel. Still only 21 years old, Baker has crafted an album that flickers in the dark, but her own star is burning brighter than ever.
100
The Young Folks

For all of the neatly positioned, lyrical delicacy and an image that’s been crafted to portray raw and visceral sorrow, Baker’s sophomore album Turn Out the Lights has a bountiful of fight buried within, clawing its way to the surface.

100
A.V. Club

Whether hopeful or wallowing, Turn Out The Lights is beautifully crafted throughout, full of the kinds of songs that linger long after they’ve ended.

100
No Ripcord

Turn Out the Lights is an immense record that runs a gamut of emotions, from distress to love, anguish to healing. These are songs that you feel more than listen to. Everyone has encountered some sort of mental illness, addiction or crisis of faith, whether in your life or another’s. Not only does Baker prove that you’re not alone, but she finds a way to make it better.

91
Consequence of Sound

Turn Out the Lights is a rich, moving work that creates a communion of sorts, an acknowledgement that the little victories are worth embracing even if salvation seems utterly out of reach.

90
The Sydney Morning Herald
The second album from the 22-year-old from Memphis could so easily become misery porn, but instead it's a stark triumph.
90
Under the Radar

Turn Out the Lights will find relevancy as long as there are people with ears and feelings. It prioritizes and gives weight to our everyday struggles with our own mortality, confidence, and self-worth. Baker is writing faultless songs that will always have a home in our hearts because finding comfort in even the saddest moments means we're still feeling.

90
The 405

Julien Baker takes a vitally human approach to a range of weighty topics on her striking second album Turn Out The Lights.

90
Alternative Press

Before, it was easy to see Baker’s vulnerability as childlike, but Turn Out The Lights proves she’s had enough pain to last several lifetimes. There’s an elegance to her music that wasn’t there before—a sudden bright piano riff over deep guitar; a harrowing, shouted acapella—that feels like a coming of age.

90
Exclaim!

Baker is careful not to glorify life's darkest moments, and certainly doesn't on Turn Out the Lights. Rather, her candid portrayal of pain is a rare and beautiful gift.

90
American Songwriter

Two years later, Baker is back with Turn Out The Lights, which gently expands the sonic boundaries of her haunting folk ballads. On her second album, the Memphis singer firmly establishes herself as America’s high priestess of pain, a young songwriter who, like Joni Mitchell and Elliott Smith before her, interrogates human emotion with nuanced complexity and devastating self-awareness.

89
Paste
Around every corner, Baker practices restraint where she could’ve gone for a bigger moment. The effect is an album that’s powerful but not overwrought.
86
Pitchfork
The second album from Tennessee songwriter Julien Baker wrestles with self-worth, rejection, and God. Centering on her voice, guitar, and piano, Baker begins to sound defiant.
83
Pretty Much Amazing

Turn Out the Lights is an exciting sophomore effort from an even more exciting artist. While the album isn’t a tremendous leap forward from Sprained Ankle, Baker emerges with her vision and voice more fully formed.

80
The Line of Best Fit

Baker’s lyrics have always been at the heart of proceedings, and this album is no different: it’s still confessional, honest and intensely personal in the same way Sprained Ankle was.

80
Record Collector
There’s really just one setting here, and it’s deliciously cheerless. It won’t be to everyone’s tastes, but if you like your music to sound as if it could soundtrack a coming of age montage in a particularly gloomy John Hughes film, you found your gal.
80
Spectrum Culture
The result is another album that speaks volumes about her self-reflection and sees her reach moments of sublime grace over and over.
80
Dork
Sparking with brilliance and dancing under the weight of the world, ‘Turn Out The Lights’ is mind, body and soul superb.
80
FLOOD Magazine

Across all of Turn Out the Lights, Baker doesn’t pull a single punch, and things can get remarkably dark.

80
Drowned in Sound

Turn Out the Lights is far from a happy album, but my word, it is riddled with joy.

78
GIGsoup
The intimacy that enchanted us in the first album is partially gone, and with it disappears some of the painfully memorable riffs and ostinatos of ‘Sprained Ankle’. But instead of unapologetically breaking our hearts again and again, ‘Turn Out The Lights’ begins to heal them. If listeners give this new album some time, its beauty will enchant them just as much as her debut.
75
Northern Transmissions

Turn Out the Lights feels like the second date, with Baker more comfortable filling in blanks about her life and struggles that seemed to soon to share on her debut.

70
Clash
Stretched over the course of a complete album, such little deviation from the well-worn song-structures can make for overly simplistic and almost tiresome listening. Which isn’t to detract from the carefully curated lyrics of ‘Turn Out The Lights’, a record bursting with artistic emotion and vulnerable resilience.
70
AllMusic
For those who are receptive, the songwriter's ferocious authenticity connects in spite of, rather than in concert with, the more dramatic accompaniment here.
70
PopMatters

Though sometimes it teeters on hammy sentimentality, the bulk of Turn Out the Lights portrays an artist who could move towards serious commercial viability. But the sadness that she communicates is her truthful testimony, and it’ll serve as a cathartic vessel to many for years to come.

70
The Needle Drop
Julien Baker's new crop of songs explores the depths of depression with a slow, burning passion.
60
The Irish Times

At times, Turn Out the Lights is so nakedly personal it plays like an album of torn-out diary entries, and it feels as intrusive as hearing a neighbour's twilight sobs leaking through a partition wall.

60
The Guardian
This first effort for a larger label has a hymnal atmosphere, in which the turbulence shows in her words.
60
Loud and Quiet
There are moments when Julien Baker’s second album sounds like an externalisation of the negative voice in your head.
60
The Skinny
The record becomes claustrophobic in its emotional and melodic range. Baker doesn’t shy away from the weight of depression, but depending on your emotional state, the album is either cathartic or overbearing, like fluorescent lights to tired eyes.
Host
85

julien is using her voice so dynamically on this bro, its so awesome.

zeyadreda
80

she is like an angel, her voice her music, that dreamy vibs she write, i always love anything comes out from her, she makes you calm and relaxed, then she takes out a great passion in the end of every song, the whole album is amazing with a lot of stand out tracks all over it, i will always return for this record for a long of time.
my top 3 songs are:
1- Hurt Less
2- Turn Out the Lights
3- Appointments

apotofstu
80

Hitting the mark yet again, Julien Baker presents another batch of songs as somber and beautiful as the last.

First and foremost, one can notice the technical improvements that Julien has made since her previous project from the get-go, going from the sparseness of just her and her guitar on Sprained Ankle to a wide range of instrumentation here. Julien's trajectory is apparent nowhere else than in the one-two starter of 'Over' and 'Appointments,' opening the album with a beautiful mixing of ... read more

bomber
91

i was disappointed with little oblivions and so i wanted too see if Julien was capable of executing the sound she failed at with little oblivions, and here, she doesn't, because its a different genre and sound, but she fucking nails this genre anyways, this album is stunning, its incredibly immersive and the lyrics are so poetic and punishing, while the tracks can sound similar to each other, they still each have their own lyrics that make them stand out, the vocals are also so dynamic and ... read more

BenjaminB8
74

the mood on this record is very well executed.

90

this is gorgeous and might be better then Sprained Ankle (which i also gave a 9). the vocals on this are on point, the instrumentation is borderline perfect and all the tracks work so well together and this album also has a really good transition between those first 2 tracks. didnt expect this to be as good as it was but im glad it is, this is so good.
fav track: every single one

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Added on: August 17, 2017