Julien Baker shares “Hardline” from new LP, covers Soundgarden (watch)

Judy Moreno

Julien Baker's highly-anticipated third album, Little Oblivions, is due out February 26 via Matador, and she's just shared its second single, first track "Hardline." Like "Faith Healer," it's a more fleshed-out sounding song than many others we've heard from Julien in the past, but it's still as emotionally resonant as her more spare, bare bones material.

"A few years ago I started collecting travel ephemera again with a loose idea of making a piece of art with it," Julien writes. "I had been touring pretty consistently since 2015 and had been traveling so much that items like plane tickets and hotel keycards didn't have much novelty anymore. So I saved all my travel stuff and made a little collage of a house and a van out of it. I wanted to incorporate it into the record and when we were brainstorming ideas for videos we came across Joe Baughman and really liked his work so we reached out with the idea of making a stop-motion video that had similar aesthetic qualities as the house I built did. I don't know why I have the impulse to write songs or make tiny sculptures out of plane tickets. But here it is anyway: a bunch of things I've collected and carried with me that I've re-organized into a new shape."

Baughman directed the video for "Hardline," which you can watch below, and he writes, "even after having spent 600 hours immersed in 'Hardline' and having listened to it thousands of times, I am still moved by it. It was a fun and ambitious challenge creating something that could accompany such a compelling song. The style of the set design, inspired by a sculpture that Julien created, was especially fun to work in. I loved sifting through magazines, maps, and newspapers from the 60s and 70s and finding the right colors, shapes, and quotes to cover almost every surface in the video."

Meanwhile, Julien taped a performance for KEXP a week ago, which just came out today; it includes a solo acoustic performance of Soundgarden's "Fell on Black Days" around the 43 minute mark, and you can watch the whole thing below. Julien also appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert last week to perform "Faith Healer." Watch that below, as well.