The response to Baker's first album Sprained Ankle has taken her all over the world. "You don't have to be defined by your suffering," says Baker, who sings intense, folkish songs in a voice devoid of tricks, over little more than one or two instruments played by her. Not that everyone on the Baker team has quite grasped that message. There's something both right and wrong about this line from a press release announcing her debut solo album, Sprained Ankle: "Thankfully, now the world will be able to share in her passion and sorrow." Yes, we can take value from sharing in her intensity, but there's something discomforting about celebrating our ability to thrive on her sorrow. "There's a learning curve for an artist who prides herself, as many of my heroes also do, on honesty and authenticity and vulnerability as a display of strength. Learning when to say, 'I'm allowed to withhold parts of my life, for myself'," Baker says. "But at the same time, when I go on stage I try to acknowledge that, yes, these songs are sad – let's laugh about how almost comically sad they are – then say: I can be a well-adjusted individual because the songs are so sad."

This wasn't meant to be some public exorcism, after all: the songs were recorded mainly to have a record of material she had written outside her school-and-then-college band, Forrister, and put up on Bandcamp for what she assumed was a handful of friends. Even when a small label approached her to release those songs, she expected the album to drift away. Instead, Sprained Ankle has become a quiet storm and sent her on the road all over the world. In fact, Baker should be at college right now, beginning another year of her literature degree (with a double minor in Spanish and secondary education) that she was relishing. "I feel like such a dork but I loved school," she says. But success has complicated matters. She has moved from the marvellously named college town of Murfreesboro​ back to her home in Memphis with the view that "I'm going to pursue this avenue of my life until it becomes non-sustainable, and then I will return to school because I don't want to divide my efforts and give less than 100 per cent to either". That's not so much sensible as typical for Baker, who is practical and passionate about just about every aspect of her life, including faith. On Sprained Ankle she questions her faith, which doesn't mean she's lost it – far from it. There's an almost ecstatic declaration of belief near the end of the album in Rejoice, which says: "I think there is a god and he hears either way when I rejoice and complain." How does she feel about the argument – flowing from the idea of us drawing comfort from her sorrow and pain – that the value of God can sometimes be as simple as someone we believe we can talk to; someone who hears, even if there is no response or return on faith?