Brandi Carlile is coming back to the center stage. The singer-songwriter will release her eighth studio album, Returning to Myself, her first solo project in four years, on Oct. 24.
“I’m not my favorite person to spend my time with,” Carlile shared in a statement about the record. “Returning to myself is not just a lonely, but a painfully boring thing to do. So much so that I’m actually not at all interested in doing it.” Even so, the album’s title track, which is available now along with a music video directed by Floria Sigismondi, leans into that feeling of solitude.
Carlile recorded Returning to Myself with Andrew Watt, Aaron Dessner, and Justin Vernon. She was also joined by her longtime bandmates Phil and Tim Hanseroth, along with SistaStrings, Josh Klinghoffer, Chad Smith, Matt Chamberlain, Dave Mackay, Rob Moose, Blake Mills, Mark Isham, and Stewart Cole. The group of close collaborators reflects the lessons Carlile drew from the process about what it means to sit with herself.
“For me, the key to learning to ‘be alone’ is not being alone at all. It’s being alone in a crowded room. It’s hearing an unexpected doorbell ring and wondering who has shown up to watch me read my book and bite my nails all day,” she explained. “That a guest can be a deep lean-in over a cheap bottle of wine or simply an eyebrow raises and a gesture toward the refrigerator while I play Zelda…where I totally choose myself with someone so close to me I can hear them relax.”
She went on to say, “Togetherness has given me everything I love about being alive. Starting with my original family in a single wide mobile home, gathered around a wood stove, all the way to living with my band, haunting my wife everywhere she goes, raising my children on a tour bus, learning at the feet of Joni Mitchell, to making music with my greatest hero of all time, Elton John. Why is it heroic to untether, when the tense work of togetherness is so much more interesting? …because I don’t want to do it. Because I don’t want to return to myself. And that’s why I will.”
Returning to Myself features 10 tracks and follows 2021’s In These Silent Days as well as Who Believes in Angels, the collaborative album Carlile made with Elton John earlier this year.
Returning to Myself Track List
