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Nov 7, 2017These 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.
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Oct 27, 2017Turn Out The Lights is beautifully crafted throughout, full of the kinds of songs that linger long after they’ve ended. Baker doesn’t make it easy, but fans wouldn’t have it any other way.
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Oct 27, 2017Turn 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.
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Oct 30, 2017What elevates Turn Out The Lights is that it’s sensory as well as earnest, personally destabilising while artfully assured; it oscillates in the spilling synaesthesia of panic attacks, the dizzying clarity of epiphany, the paralysing futility of depressive episodes, the unfathomable locus of being okay.
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Oct 27, 2017There’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.
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Oct 25, 2017Baker 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. And if we're feeling, there's hope for us yet.
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Oct 24, 2017Baker 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.
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Oct 23, 2017An album that feels like a logical next step for the Memphis singer-songwriter, but never overreaches. And overreaching would’ve been easy.
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Oct 27, 2017A direct thematic line runs from the album’s first full song, “Appointments,” to “Claws in Your Back”’s riveting finish.
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Oct 30, 2017Turn 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. Wherever she goes from here, the world will be waiting to meet her.
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Nov 13, 2017It 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.
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Oct 27, 2017The final result is a balm to soothe well-trodden emotional frequencies.
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Oct 27, 2017Turn Out The Lights is a powerful listen, teaching you to live with your failures and fears, and to move from coping with them to actually loving them.
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Oct 26, 2017Aching, vulnerable, and unsparing in detail, her creations invite you to listen with your whole self and feel along.
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Oct 26, 2017Turn Out the Lights is far from a happy album, but my word, it is riddled with joy.
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UncutOct 23, 2017Lights may be bleak, but that only makes the moments of catharsis all the more illuminating. [Dec 2017, p.22]
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Oct 23, 2017It’s so cohesive in its theme that it can become overwhelming.
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Oct 27, 2017An album that turns its predecessor’s intimacy into something far more ambitious.
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Nov 6, 2017A record bursting with artistic emotion and vulnerable resilience.
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Oct 26, 2017Cathartic and wrecked, Turn Out the Lights is the type of album that will be uncommonly relatable to some and unbearable to others. For those who are receptive, the songwriter's ferocious authenticity connects in spite of, rather than in concert with, the more dramatic accompaniment here.
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Oct 25, 2017Baker is carefully balancing both sides without leaning too far in one direction, and though her songwriting is sharp, its fastidious uniformity makes the whole of it feel one-note.
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Oct 26, 2017Her guitar and piano now come with string arrangements and a big, satin-finish production, which takes baby steps towards a mainstream audience, although perhaps some of her magical fragility is being lost.
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MojoOct 24, 2017The delivery is folk emo. [Dec 2017, p.92]
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Oct 23, 2017Baker doesn’t shy away from the weight of depression, but depending on your emotional state, the album is either cathartic or overbearing.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 39 out of 47
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Mixed: 5 out of 47
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Negative: 3 out of 47
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Nov 28, 2021
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Nov 2, 2017