LIVE: Julien Baker – Earth, Hackney (19.11.2024)

A bitterly cold and wet Tuesday night in November; what better time to venture alone to immerse myself in some beautiful, emotion-filled live music… ? My first time at Earth in Dalston, I feel grateful to be able to see three such esteemed artists in this deceptively intimate space. 

After queuing in the rain for a while, I arrive in time to catch most of GIHE fave Katie Malco’s opening set. Reflecting on her recent US tour with Soak and her failings at booking appropriate / warm / safe accommodation, as well as all her gear going up in flames in a rehearsal space earlier this year, it seems she’s had a bit of a bad run of it lately, but this is no way takes away from her engaging charisma and charm as she delivers her captivating indie-folk ballads. Playing alone without a band, she still manages to create a rich scuzzy splendour and immersive gentle emotion with the sparkling heartfelt grace of songs like ‘Brooklyn’ and ‘Babette’ – the latter of which she normally sings alongside Soak, who is due on stage shortly. 

Touching on themes of self-discovery, queer identity and the housing crisis, Irish artist Soak delivers a set of new songs; each glistening with a stirring raw emotion. As their distinctive vocals float alongside lilting melodies, each offering tugs at the heartstrings with an achingly beautiful sense of nostalgia. Grateful I finally got to witness their delicately impassioned sounds live, I’m also left intrigued to hear more about the time that they were backstage on tour with Katie Malco and someone was “playing a saw like a violin and singing ‘Wonderwall’”… 

I’m not sure how I really expected to feel seeing Julien Baker live for the first time. An artist who I’ve listened to – and sought comfort in – probably almost every day for the last few years, my expectations and emotions were running pretty high. Amongst a crowd of predominantly young people accompanied by their parents, I wonder if it’s normal for a woman of my age to feel this much resonance with the music of someone like Baker, but as soon as she takes to the stage (beginning the set with my most favourite song), all worries cease and I’m instantly reassured. When music moves you this much, what does age matter? I’m a 38 year old queer woman and I need this beautiful aural catharsis in my life. As the swirling crescendo of piano and guitar soars throughout ‘Appointments’ alongside the melancholy raw emotion of Baker’s vocals, I feel my heart gently shatter and tears start to dampen my cheeks. But I also feel an unexpected sense of calm; a comfort in the relatability of the feeling and meaning behind the song – an unspoken sense of unity with the other damp cheeks I see glistening around me. And that is the beauty of music this honest and powerful; however old or young you may be, you can find comfort in what it has to say. 

Continuing to completely captivate the crowd with songs spanning her career, including the quiet desperation of 2019’s ‘Red Door’ and shimmering splendour of 2021’s ‘Relative Fiction’, Baker succeeds in immersing us fully. Although her anxiety is evident between songs – “Sometimes I get really nervous and can’t see my fretboard” -, when she’s delivering each heartfelt offering, her focus seems entirely intact, the raw emotive power of her vocals never faltering. And despite describing the experience as “like a stress dream”, I feel far from stressed at being able to bear witness to such exquisite musicality and refreshingly honest lyricism. In fact, I think there’s a subtle empowering strength to exposing one’s vulnerability through the stark emotion that emanates from each and every song. 

From crowd favourites like 2017’s ‘Shadowboxing’ to the glitchy whirring soundscapes of 2019’s ‘Tokyo’, each resonant lyric ripples with an effervescent grace. From the heartbreaking personal introspection of ‘Sprained Ankle’ to the fizzing lilting energy of ‘Bloodshot’, each sparkling melody gently takes hold, leaving 14 and 38-year-olds alike equally spellbound. 

Whether playing with or without her excellent full band, Baker succeeds in creating a soaring majestic splendour; a swirling raw emotion that envelopes her audience, offering a comforting catharsis. Having to leave the venue a few minutes early to catch a train, I realise it feels almost like leaving a therapy session; feelings have been shared, tears have been shed – I feel understood, I feel lighter. So, thank you Julien Baker for opening up to us, for creating music that is so honest and relatable; so soothing and empowering. So damn beautiful.

Words: Mari Lane / @mari_getinherears
Photos: Abi Chilton / @abi.chilton

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INTERVIEW: Bleach Lab

Released in September 2023, Bleach Lab’s debut album, Lost In A Rush Of Emptiness, is an impressive collection of poignant catharsis, poetic heartache and dreamy textures. Demonstrating a mastery of their shoegaze-inspired ethereal sound, influenced by the likes of Mazzy Star, Cocteau Twins and Stereolab, Bleach Lab feel like a band who are comfortable and vulnerable in their own skin.

When we last caught up with them in 2021, the London and Brighton based four-piece were adapting to rehearsing and performing in person, having formed during the pandemic. In 2024, it’s fair to say much has changed – with numerous celebratory and admiring album reviews under their belt. Having recently completed their European tour, plus their first ever shows in the US, Bleach Lab are in a self- professed “really good place”.

We caught up with vocalist Jenna Kyle and drummer Kieran Weston to talk about the album tour, their experience of recording in pyjamas with Grammy-nominated producer Catherine Marks and their “School of Rock” pre-show ritual…

Hi Jenna and Kieran! Firstly, congratulations on the one-year anniversary of your debut album, Lost In A Rush Of Emptiness. What has the past year looked like for you? What has changed for you since the release?

Kieran: It’s been a year of basically just trying to ‘live’ that album as much as possible – trying to play shows and get the music out there, live. I feel like our songs come to life in a new way live, especially songs like Counting Empties. It’s been important for people to connect with those songs in a live sense. We’ve played some amazing shows like South By South West, we had the album tour as well and played Scala which was insane. So, yeah, a big push on playing live and really letting those songs live. Obviously, it’s been a year, and we wanted to make sure we had a full year for the songs to really ‘live’.

Jenna: Like Kieran says, sitting with it, but also having a focus on what’s next and continuing to write. There’s a crossover of those two, which we’re now doing.

You completed a European tour and played your first show in the US this year. How were those experiences? How did playing in the US compare to playing for home crowds?

Jenna: It was really exciting! I think we were all very apprehensive – obviously it’s the other side of the world, so you don’t really know how you’ll be received. We had quite a lot of fans messaging us to say that they were excited to see us, so we knew there would be a few heads in the crowd. We were very jet-lagged, though, and a little bit… delusional?

Kieran: I would say delusional is actually the right word!

Jenna: We were also only there for around four days. It was actually my first time ever in the US, I had never been on a long-haul flight, so it felt like being in a bit of a
different world.

Kieran: Yeah – four days and four shows, so it was a lot, but it was incredible to be that far away from home and to see people in the crowd singing – that was pretty mega. Quite consistently, too! I don’t think any of those shows were quiet ones, so it was quite mind-blowing to be honest.

That sounds like a whirlwind. I often hear bands talking about having equipment nightmares when moving between playing shows in the UK and the US…

Kieran: You had that Jenna, didn’t you?

Jenna: Yeah, I use in-ear monitors on stage and I thought they had broken during the flight or transport, because they didn’t work at any of the venues. We tried them for the first time at 1am at this quirky dive-bar venue and they just wouldn’t connect, and I just thought ‘shit. Bloody broken them, haven’t I?’ Because I don’t put them in a safe box or anything. All the signals were overlapping, and you couldn’t get the right connection on the box. But we made it work!

Kieran: It was proper band-y. You know – wake up, go to a venue, literally get thrown on stage, perform, get off the stage, and then repeat. Very quickfire. It was pretty cool.

Do you have a pre-show ritual to help with creating some kind of routine?

Jenna: We’re very chilled really, we tend to just have a lot of down-time before shows.

Kieran: Our manager has actually raised with us before, we’re like the most low-energy band before a gig ever! We are very chilled. We do have a few rituals immediately before going on stage though…

Jenna: Literally as we walk on stage, we do [mimes fingers in a kicking motion] – is it from School of Rock? It’s really lame, and we make sure that nobody sees it, but it is happening!

Kieran: School of Rock, yeah. The ‘let’s rock, let’s rock today’ handshake.

I love that – it’s a classic. What have been your favourite songs to perform live from this album?

Kieran: For me it would absolutely be ‘Everything At Once’, it was also one of my favourites to record, but performing it live, it’s just taken on this whole new energy, so much so that it’s actually kind of informed what we’re doing moving forward, that kind of grungier sound. We’ve seen how that was received live, seen some movement in the crowd, some head bobs! So that was a song that massively came to life for me from performing it and moving forward it’s definitely forming the direction we’re moving into.

Jenna: Yeah, for me as well, ‘Everything At Once’ is definitely a moment I always look forward to at the end of the set – we’ve been finishing our sets with it for a little while now because it’s got such a big ending and it’s really fun. But I think for me, my favourite to perform is ‘Saving All Your Kindness’ – it’s just a really heartfelt, emotional ‘let’s bring it down’ moment in the set. It’s got my favourite lyrics of the album as well, so I really enjoy performing that and just feeling that emotion. ‘Counting Empties’ also goes down quite well too – it’s a slower moment for us but it helps build momentum as well.

Kieran: I guess there’s two sides to live shows. A side where we do have songs like ‘Everything At Once’ where we’d like people to be able to get moving, but also, we’ve always had those songs where people really relate to them, songs like ‘Counting Empties’ and ‘Saving All Your Kindness’ and equally, that side has its moment as well, which is what makes live shows so enjoyable.

When we last spoke to you in 2021, it was mentioned that you were refining your song-writing processes in the wake of emerging from lockdown and writing and rehearsing remotely. How has that come along? Is writing remotely still a part of the process?

Kieran: Well, we had a tricky situation where our guitarist left after the album – we got a new guitarist in, Lewis, who I’ve known for six or seven years, so it felt fairly
seamless. But it has definitely meant a different approach to writing, we still do things remotely but less so, there’s been a lot more in-the-room writing. Lewis is a producer, and Josh and I live down the road from his studio, so we’ve been in there writing instrumentals together, which has never really happened before. Jenna has come down a lot for lyric writing and melody writing, which we’ve all then had input with this time, so that’s been really nice. Lewis and I tend to take the instrumentation and more ‘atmospheric’ side of writing and production perhaps, with Josh and Jenna [working more] on the lyric side.

It’s great to hear that there’s such collaborative input. Jenna, you’ve spoken previously about being influenced lyrically by other songwriters. Are there literary sources of inspiration for you too? Given that the album name is from a line from Leonard Cohen’s poetry collection, The Flame?

Jenna: Josh definitely has some literary influences. For him, it’s been Patti Smith’s book Just Kids and the poem ‘Do Not Stand At My Grave and Weep’ by Mary Elizabeth Frye. Poems like that inform some of Josh’s writing about his father passing away. Josh writes a lot of poetry and reads a lot of books and is really into his writing, which is a slightly different writing process to me. I lean on my experiences and my life lessons and things I’ve been through, or that my friends have been through, rather than specific writers.

Your album was released following several successful EPs. how did recording an album compare to recording an EP? Did you feel that there were any different considerations you needed to take into account?

Jenna: We describe the EPs as sort of ‘experiments’ with what worked for us, what we wanted to sound like sonically and what our image was. It was a lot of exploration and discovery. I think we learnt a lot from those EPs about how we would like to produce and write the album, and how we would like it to be perceived as a whole project. The recording process for the album was almost completely different.

In what way?

Jenna: With the EPs we were pretty separate for much of the recording – drums and bass were recorded in one location and the guitars were put down separately. When I was recording vocals, I think I only probably saw the guys once or twice. It would just be me and whatever producer we were working with at the time. But with the album, for the most part, it was recorded with us all together in one room. It was a lot more collaborative, and we were able to be a lot more involved with each other’s instruments.

Kieran: It was the first time we had recorded something all live, pretty much. I think it was what the music needed, we always wanted the album to be more authentic and a bit more ‘rough around the edges’ to keep that charm to it. Vocals tended to be put in over the top, but Jenna was recording guide vocals in the room. The takes that ended up on the album for the drums, bass, and guitar were all together, from looking and feeding off each other’s energy, which was the main difference to anything we’ve ever done before, really.

What was it like to work with Grammy-nominated producer Catherine Marks (boygenius) on Lost In A Rush of Emptiness? How do you think she contributed to the feel and sound of the album?

Kieran: Catherine drew the perfect line between letting us be a band and giving us that freedom in the live room. There was one point that I kind of just when off on a whim and did a half-time bit, which ended up on the album in ‘Everything At Once’ and she really encouraged that, but then also had the ability to steer us into the right direction. She was really good at being like, ‘No, this is fine, this is what we need to do’ and coming into the room and saying ‘can you try this, this way?’, so it was the perfect line between giving us freedom and creativity but also steering us in the right direction. It was an amazing experience and I think that comes across in the sound of the album to be honest.

That confidence in your own sound, which feels pretty established now, definitely comes across on the record. In your own words, how would you describe the essence of Bleach Lab’s sound?

Kieran: We actually thought about this at length before starting. We decided that we wanted the album to sound ‘like red wine and dark chocolate’ and from the very start of recording we had that in mind, to the point where we actually came in to record in pyjamas, just to really set the tone.

Jenna: Catherine was in pyjamas as well!

Kieran: With everything we did we were just thinking of that image, and that helped to mould the whole album and that vibe. It just feels warm and like you want to just be listening to the vinyl, by a fire, with a red wine. I love that we did that. It really worked.

You recently posted a video on Instagram of you guys covering Chappell Roan’s ‘Good Luck, Babe!’ – are there other artists or songs you enjoy covering?

Jenna: We recorded and released a live session of Mazzy Star, which was a while ago now, but loved that and we had quite a good response from that as well. With the Chappell Roan cover, we’re big fans, obviously at the moment she’s taking over the world, and I think we thought putting a little bit of a Bleach Lab spin on it would be fun.

We’re always talking about covers. Every time I think one of us has a drink and we’re out, we’ll always message like ‘We need to cover this song’ and we never do – we’ve got a ridiculously long list of things we would like to. I wanted to cover something like Avril Lavigne or Gwen Stefani – I don’t know, just taking something obscure and putting a Bleach Lab twist on it. We haven’t done anything live yet – our manager is very insistent that we do, she wanted us to do the full ‘Good, Luck, Babe!’ live. I can imagine it going well.

Kieran: We really want to do something that’s completely not Bleach Lab and make it Bleach Lab and I think once we find that, it could be Avril Lavigne to be fair, I think that’s a good shout…

Jenna: I think we also mentioned ‘Planet Caravan’ (by Black Sabbath). That could be on the cards.

We’d love to hear a Bleach Lab take on ‘Sk8er Boi’. What are you looking forward to in the coming year?

Kieran: I think actually we’re in a really good place as a band. The mood is really good at the moment, we’re into the second album but I don’t really feel like there’s pressure and I think that’s perhaps due to changes in the band it all feels new, quite naturally, with a new member in there. Where perhaps before we’d have to think about developing our sound, it has kind of happened naturally because the band has developed. So, a lot of excitement – a lot of writing going on, some really good songs with a bit of a new sound, but staying true to what our fans like. It’s just excitement really to get cracking. Hopefully do what we did with the first album all over again. That’s the plan!

Thanks to Jenna & Kieran for the chat!

Follow Bleach Lab on bandcamp, Spotify, Instagram, Twitter & Facebook

Questions: Jen Horsfall

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