Brandi Carlile holds nothing back on unflinching new album
alot of things have changed for brandi carlile in the last three years. the strength of 2018’s By the Way, I Forgive You (and that Grammys high note heard round the country) opened new doors for the hometown girl who used to pack ’em in at a little Seattle pub. the stages grew bigger, the spotlights brighter. the dreams a little wilder and closer within reach.
there’s been no shortage of rewarding turns on the road to carlile’s highly anticipated follow-up, In These Silent Days, which enters the world on Friday. the country supergroup with a purpose. tanya tucker’s comeback album. tribute shows for her new jam buddy joni mitchell. and then there’s that bestselling memoir carlile suddenly had a few more stories for.
With every new side project and new wrinkle in her live show, it felt like for all the milestones, carlile and longtime collaborators phil and tim hanseroth were really just getting started. even By the Way, I Forgive You ended on a new beginning when, rising to a challenge from co-producer dave cobb, carlile delivered the gutsiest vocal performance of her career with “the joke,” earning song and record of the year nominations at the Grammys.
“I’ve never really been good at relaying emotion in studio performances,” carlile said. “It’s always really hard for me without the audience. and when I finished ‘by the Way, I Forgive you’ on ‘the joke,’ it was kinda sad ’cause it was like, ‘ah man, I just finally got there. I think I know how to do this now.’ and then it was over.”
laying her heart down on studio tracks certainly isn’t a problem on her soul-baring In These Silent Days, carlile’s seventh studio album. Song for song, it’s the most dynamic and unflinching collection of her career. through all the side adventures (and subsequent pandemic isolation) of the last few years, carlile “had it in my head that I wanted to go right back to the same place, with exactly the same people, and start where I left off,” she said. “So I went into [this album] ready to lay bare my feelings about those words and about this book and about this time in my life – these crazy silent days.”
armed with a fresh clarity her memoir’s reflection and self-examination afforded her, carlile began writing songs with “a lot more awareness” and intention. It was a break from her usual style, where a song’s meaning might not reveal itself to her until months later.
carlile’s lyrics weren’t quite finished until they hit the studio. one of the chorus’s signature lines – “mending up your fences with my horses running wild” – came to her in a dream, and she ran it past bernie taupin, elton john’s lyricist, who wouldn’t dare change a thing. “bernie’s kind of a cowboy, anyway,” carlile said. “he sends me lyrics all the time and there’s a lot of american West-themed, cowboy, horses and livestock and plains. just talking to him conjures a painting.”
(lest you thought carlile’s side project slate was clean for a change, she and taupin are talking collaboration. they’ve already written three songs together, his words and her music. “I played ’em for elton recently, too,” carlile said. “he loved ’em. he’s like, ‘they’re so weird!’ I’m like, ‘I know!’”)
In These Silent Days isn’t exactly a radical reinvention for carlile and the twins, so much as it is a distillation of myriad elements and influences already in their arsenal, formed into something new. but “broken horses” is hardly the only song that distinguishes itself from their past work.
after “broken horses,” “there was a trajectory from there away from sadness and anger, and into celebration and acceptance and empathy,” carlile said. “the book put me in touch with some righteous anger and grief that I wanted to reconcile, and I did.” by the end, carlile was mining more uplifting moods with “right on time,” lovely folk number “Stay Gentle” and the change-ofpace “you and me on the rock” — a feathery soft rocker that sounds like paul Simon and the haim sisters came over to jam after getting their hands dirty in carlile’s tomato garden.
“those are celebrations and realizations that there’s a foundation in my life that I’m proud of,” carlile said of the songs.
the word “unlocked” has assumed a prominent place in carlile’s vocabulary in recent years, particularly when discussing joni mitchell. the two struck up friendship and carlile helped organize all-star jam sessions at mitchell’s house before the pandemic. She uses the word to describe an almost mystic quality possessed by some of the truly great artists – a deeper connection with “the source of where music comes from, the muse,” as carlile explained it this spring.
carlile’s quick to refute any suggestion she’s reached such a plane herself, but said she’s managed to “absorb some of that stardust coming off of [mitchell] and put it in practice.”
“With people like joni or herbie hancock or miles davis, it’s not what you learn from them, it’s what you unlearn from them,” she said. “but it’s so much slower to unlearn than it is to learn.”
the idea of being “unlocked” also came up while making the new record, according to tim, who defined it as a sort of musical freedom. “I think our next record is gonna be like a bridge to that place,” he said. (the Seattle times/tnS)