Julien Baker Invites Us Into Her World Built Of Tour Souvenirs In “Hardline”

From tickets to keycards, it’s very flammable

Photo: Alysse Gafkjen

Julien Baker beckons us into a whole new world built on materials she’s collected through her tours and travels (think of endless plane tickets, luggage tags, keycards, etc.) in her new video “Hardline.” This is some serious premium arts & crafts masterpiece – it’s a stop-motion of 3D collage where you get to see all kinds of characters and architecture come to life in a magical way. While we’re used to tossing away those little things that we collect traveling (remember traveling?), Julien has decided to team up with Joe Baughman, who directed the video, to build a new dimension:

Speaking of the release, Julien shared: “A few years ago I started collecting travel ephemera again with a loose idea of making a piece of art with it. 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.”

Joe Baughman noted: “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.”

“Hardline” is from Julien’s upcoming record Little Oblivions, which will be out on February 26th via Matador Records.