Our 7am appointment with sadness

[Video][Website]
[6.88]

Hannah Jocelyn: Stereogum just put out a fantastic interview with Julien where she discusses recording Turn Out The Lights. When discussing the album, Tom Breihan asks Baker whether she had to go to a dark place when writing the songs for her first album, and she responds “I was just in that place.” The singles from TOTL remain in “that place” to  an extent, only in a cavern instead of a claustrophobic room. It’s fitting, because the song is about attempting to leave that cave and then regressing, needing to go back to seeing a therapist, back to calling doctors, back to everything you’d hope you’d started to need less. The scale is exponentially bigger than anything on Sprained Ankle; “Appointments” is produced like a mainstream rock album, but arranged like a bedroom recording. The album is self-produced, but engineer Craig Silvey has mixed records for Florence + The Machine, Arcade Fire, and others; as much as a mixer can have a style, records credited to him usually feature heavy distortion and edge. Hearing that style applied to Baker’s sparseness gives it an intensity that it would already have otherwise, but even if “Appointments” doesn’t feel as intimate sonically, it still hits hard. 
[8]

Ashley John: I’ll be honest, only because Julien Baker compels me to be, but I took a long time to let myself listen to anything from Baker. I read the profiles and the descriptions and had a hunch that listening for even a second would break me, make me confront issues I’d made every effort to squash. In an uncharacteristic strain of self-interest, I was right. Baker’s music feels like a throbbing scar that’s formed a layer just enough to stop bleeding. But “Appointments” is about more than the bleeding or the healing. It is about living with pain without ignoring it. The song is about taking a step even if you aren’t sure that you’re moving forward. Baker sings of a humble, broken bravery more honorable than anything I’ve ever known. 
[8]

Ryo Miyauchi: The melodrama of “Appointments” blanks out into anonymity as the forlorn music strikes too broad. The lines Julien Baker writes suggests a neurotic narrator with a penchant to snap, but on record, there’s no sneer, frustration nor sarcasm. Her voice instead flattens for all her words to read as a general sadness. It’s hard to reason this as a reflection of emotional emptiness when she seems self-satisfied with her refrain: “Maybe it’s all gonna turn out all right/Oh, I know that it’s not, but I got to believe that it is.” She shows humor, however dark, so I don’t understand why everything before has to sit so plain.
[5]

Alfred Soto: Rue set to an arpeggio and basic piano. The structure can’t support the decent melody.
[4]

Alex Clifton: This is how depression sounds: echoing and cavernous, a space where time isn’t real. Everything happens both simultaneously and all-too-slowly. Of course, “Appointments” has far more structure than that–this is a song, after all, with a dramatic piano build and final verse that feels like a scream into the void — but what stands out for me here is the use of space. That emptiness suspends us in the song and traps us with all of Baker’s feeling, which is a real accomplishment albeit a claustrophobic one. It’s a pretty song, although it’s so personal that giving it a casual listen is difficult; this isn’t background music. And while a bit earnest, I’d take something like this for my worst days, broken open but on the cusp of hope. The world in 2017 is the worst horror movie I’ve ever watched, but more now than ever belief is worth holding onto. It may be the only way we survive.
[6]

Edward Okulicz: Three and a half minutes of sounding crushed and broken under an impossible weight, then a minute of emotions cracking as Baker wills against it, “Appointments” doesn’t build to a neat resolution, much as life usually doesn’t. Her honesty, strong melody and abstention from overdoing it completely all stop it feeling like a slog — it’s probably as effective an emotional release for a listener as it is for her.
[8]

Stephen Eisermann: This thoughtful, devastating song about mental illness is sung brilliantly and with a pain I would never wish on anyone. Recently, one of my best friends was diagnosed with a mental illness and I’ve spent the past two months doing my best to try and be the best friend I can be. My boyfriend and mom have both commented, recently, encouraging me for being a “good friend” and that actually made me feel worse about myself because that implies that sticking around for a friend of 15 years in spite of their serious diagnosis makes me a good person; but, it doesn’t and that should be the norm. See, I can never know what it must feel like for my friend and I constantly wish/hope/pray that they don’t feel the pain that this track leaves me with. For all of my colleagues, peers, friends, family, and fellow members of this world that suffer through mental illness: if this heartbreaking song is at all indicative of your experience, please believe me I’m with you.
[8]

William John: “Appointments”, like all Julien Baker songs, is quietly, desperately sad, but also serves as solidarity with depressives or anyone otherwise dispirited. Fractures in a relationship have revealed a broader, stark truth to Baker: that “maybe it’s all gonna turn out alright/oh, I know that it’s not.” But when reality is so unbearable, no one can begrudge indulgence in fantasy as a path to solace. In other hands, a refrain like “I have to believe that it is” might scan as performative in the same way as did, say, elements of Logic’s “1-800-273-8255.” It’s Baker’s voice, lurching from tremble to bellow, a perfect balance of vulnerability and resolve, that acts here to swiftly dispatch any allegations of artificiality.
[8]