She was a kid. That’s the first thing I think when I see the Sprained Ankle album cover today. It was probably the first thing I thought when I first saw that album cover in 2015. Baker was 19 years old when she made her debut LP, and she looked younger than that. The record came out shortly after her 20th birthday. (Baker herself turned 30 less than a month ago. Today marks 10 years since the release of Sprained Ankle.) The 19-year-old Julien Baker had done a lot of things. She’d been through addiction and recovery. She’d released an album with her teenage DIY band, and she’d toured house-show venues, with her dad in the car so that the kids in the group wouldn’t get in trouble for crossing state line without a chaperone. She’d almost died in a car accident. But still, she was barely more than a child.
