See Julien Baker Perform ‘Little Oblivions’ Songs on ‘CBS This Morning’

Julien Baker performed three songs off her recently released album Little Oblivions for CBS This Morning’s latest “Saturday Sessions.”

For the mini-concert, Baker and her backing band ran through “Hardline,” “Heatwave” and “Faith Healer,” the first three tracks on the Tennessee-based singer-songwriter’s third LP.

While Baker utilizes a backing band for the “Saturday Sessions,” she performed every instrument on Little Oblivions herself; the album also shifted away from the guitar-and-vocals approach of her previous two LP.

“I didn’t want to put out this vibe of, like, ‘I’m in a band now! I have a reason to have distortion on my pedal board!,’” Baker told IndieLand in October. “I mean, I am very happy to have a reason to have distortion on my pedal board. But I didn’t want it to feel like a gimmick. I just wanted it to feel like songwriting with drums.”

Little Oblivions, written in 2019 prior to the pandemic, finds Baker reflecting on her mental health and sobriety.

“I just didn’t realize how much was there that I hadn’t dealt with, and how much my negative coping mechanisms were going to continue to add new problems,” Baker said. “I re-examined a whole lot of things: My relationship to substances and my identity as sober or straight edge, and how those things are all different and what that means. That was a very loaded process, and I didn’t handle it well.”