Save this story for later. The singer and guitarist Julien Baker makes raw, ghostly rock music thatâs rooted in personal confession. But, unlike some artists operating in that mode, sheâs figured out how to turn fragility into a display of fortitude. Bakerâs songsâwhich explore themes of self-sabotage, atonement, and restitutionâare aching but tough. This stems, in part, from Bakerâs spiritual upbringing. She was raised in a devout Christian family near Memphis, Tennessee, and sang in church. When she came out as gay, at seventeen, she prepared herself for a swift denunciation, but her parents were compassionate. (Her father began scouring the Bible for passages about acceptance.) Itâs possible to hear the echoes of Christian hymnals in her first two albumsâideas of love and grace, mentions of God and rejoicing. Baker has a tattoo that reads âGod existsâ and has said that she senses a kind of divine presence in art, or, as she once put it, evidence of âthe possibility of man to be good.â