Julien Baker has taped an emotional, stripped-back cover of Soundgarden’s Fell On Black Days as part of an …at Home session for Seattle radio station KEXP.
The Tennessee-born indie-folk singer tackles Chris Cornell’s song, originally released on Soundgarden’s 1994 album Superunknown, during a four-song session recorded at Third Man Records in Nashville. She also speaks with writer/broadcaster Cheryl Waters for KEXP.
Explaining her decision to cover Cornell’s anthem, Baker tells Waters, “I am a huge Audioslave fan - I’m a huge fan of all things Cornell, in all of his iterations - but I am just particularly super on-board with Audioslave, and I think that is because they have such more of a visceral memory to me, because it was, like, happening when I was growing up. ”
“And then I recently was doing a dive back into Soundgarden, and I heard this song, and it was just flooring. I think there are so many cuts off of the Soundgarden records that are… every song is so good and so complex. There is so much more there underneath the ‘seminal grunge band’ icon.”
“His writing has always just been particularly haunting to me,” she adds. “but also, like, it’s something that I feel very deeply. But it’s a beautiful song.”
In the video below, Baker starts talking about Chris Cornell at the 40 minutes 20 minutes.
Baker’s new album, Little Oblivions, is out on February 26 via Matador Records.
