Red Door / Conversation Piece
Julien Baker / Red Door/Conversation Piece / 2019 / OLE-1456-7
I’ve been a fan of Julien Baker since watching her Audio Tree Live session back in the winter of 2016. Playing select tracks from her debut LP Sprained Ankle, I was appalled with the amount of sound coming out of just a tiny girl with a Telecaster and large pedalboard. Flash forward to Record Store Day, 2019. I met up with my buddy Robbie at Siren Records in Doylestown, PA and we both had this one on our docket for the day - Julien Baker’s Red Door/Conversation Piece seven inch limited to 4,000 copies. We were both able to successfully snag a copy that day. Now almost five years later, this two track 45 is worth six times what I originally paid for it - the beauty of picking up rare RSD releases.
Like all of her songs, Julien Baker isn’t one to be shy behind a microphone - Red Door and Conversation Piece both serve as a confession of inner feelings. With Baker being an English major, she is one of the most eloquent songwriters in the industry. Red Door is written loosely around a story of her Pastor. She was on her way to a gathering and had gotten out of her car in traffic and started banging on others cars out of anger because they were blocking an emergency vehicle lane to be able to rescue those injured in an accident. Combined with the beautifully composed layers of reverberated acoustic guitar, ethereal electric guitar, and grand piano, the anger and dismay are certainly portrayed alongside her woeful voice. The guitar riff that occurs at the end of each verse is my favorite part. Conversation Piece brings in a familiar theme from Baker - self-deprecation. The song centers around the idea of being a ghost instead of living. A hopeful violin joins Julien in the outro as she asks “So do you think when I die, I’d get a second try to do everything right I couldn’t the first time?”.
Red Door and Conversation Piece were written by Julien Baker and recorded by Calvin Lauber. Both tracks were captured during the Turn Out The Lights recording session but didn’t quite make the album.
