Singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile lays her soul on the line on new album – In These Silent Days – available everywhere tomorrow, including the lead-out single ‘Right On Time.’
It has been three years since the release of Brandi Carlile’s stupendous release in 2018 of By The Way, I Forgive You. Since then, her star has been ascendent with headline performances at Madison Square Garden, Gorge Amphitheatre, the release of her best-selling memoir Broken Horses and the formation of Americana-country supergroup The Highwomen that also racked up a number of Grammy nominations. Tomorrow, she is back with her new, highly anticipated follow-up In These Silent Days that sees Carlile team up with Phil and Tim Hanseroth once again for ten songs that chronicle acceptance, faith, loss and love and channel icons like David Bowie, Freddie Mercury, Elton John and Joni Mitchell—the latter two who, by some sort of cosmic alignment of the stars, have turned out to be close friends in addition to being her biggest heroes and inspirations. The result is a measured, thoughtfully and tenderly created work of art that comes from an artist in full and mature command of her own artistry. Though Carlile has nothing to prove, she proves the worth of her superstardom on this powerful record.
The record opens withy the opening ballad, ‘Right On Time.’ It’s a powerful moment of pause before the onslaught of the record, a beautiful, lingering track that allows Carlile to set the mood and showcase her vocal from the off, its raw and authentic emotion and nuance. Carlile is without a doubt at her best on these slower, more deliberate tracks, as she exhibits on later track – ‘Letter to the Past’ – a propulsive track about the power of resilience. ‘Sometimes we’ll get it wrong / But nobody leaves here alive and nothing holy comes from being right.’ On these slower tracks, Carlile shows an ability to shape a lyric, imbuing it with a double meaning as on ‘You’re a stone wall in a world full of rubber bands,’ a potential and delicate reference to her own sexuality. It’s a powerful and deliberate track that shimmers with gravitas, lyrically and sonically. ‘When You’re Wrong’ offers another stunning moment of reflection. On this last, Carlile’s vocal is laid bare, with a bare guitar accompaniment – a gut-punching track about the burden of a person taking someone for granted. It is the emotion that she infuses into her vocal that gives her artistry such intense power, almost without the need for lyrics.
‘You and Me on the Rock’ is a delightfully whimsical folk-infused track, with more than a hint of Joni Mitchell through the verses of this intricately created, acoustic-feeling track, allowing space to showcase Carlile’s lyricism and vocal – a breath of fresh air on the record. These driving, whimsical moments are a delight on the record, setting this record apart from what went before and showing the growth of Carlile’s artistry – including the influence of The Highwomen. Nowhere is this more apparent than on ‘Mama Werewolf.’ ‘If my good intentions, go running wild / If I cause you pain, my own sweet child / Won’t you promise me you’ll be the one / My silver bullet in the gun.’ It’s a miraculous song about the inevitability of making mistakes as a mother, but also the power of maternal love. These Americana sounds are hammered home on ‘This Time Tomorrow,’ in which Tim and Phil Hanseroth enter centre stage. The trio’s vocals are flawlessly balanced and poised, creating a stunning melting point on a nostalgia-infused track. ‘You know I may not be around this time tomorrow / But I’ll always be with you.‘ The track offers a more vintage-Americana sound that is a salve before shifting into the more restless rhythms of ‘Broken Horses.’ Here, the record shifts gear slightly toward a more country-rock sound. There is a raw, unvarnished nature to Carlile’s vocal that is delicious, as she lets rip, alongside a searing guitar backing track and solo. ‘Horses running wild / Only broken horses know to run.’ Carlile’s vocal is gloriously compelling in its imperfections here, accompanied by a majestically layered production.
On ‘Stay Gentle,’ Carlile imbues an almost Edith Piaf note onto the track – a mesmerising, flowing track in which Carlile offers her wisdom and outlook on life. ‘Darling, stay wild if you can / The girl with the world in her hands / The kingdom of heaven belongs to a boy / While his worries belong to a man / Stay gentle, the most powerful thing you can do.’ It’s an intoxicatingly delicate and waltzing track. The track offers the perfect interlude before the biggest track on the record – ‘Sinners, Saints and Fools.’ This song is pure cinema – a simply glorious backdrop of orchestral strings – it’s Carlile at her best combining the storytelling of ‘The Joke’ with amped-up, flawless production. The storytelling Carlile exhibits is exceptional on the track, ‘By the time he got to heaven / It was surrounded by a wall / Pearly gates were locked up tight / The golden chains and all / They said we can’t just let anyone walk in here anymore.’ It’s compelling in its narrative made more so by the intricacies of the lyrics, backed up by a mammoth production that lets Carlile let rip to her vocal, accelerating to a blistering keys and guitar conclusion that loses no momentum before leading straight into the final track. On ‘Throwing Good After Bad,’ Carlile offers a moment of reprieve after the intensity of the preceding track – another devastatingly vulnerable piano ballad.
Yet again, Carlile has created a phenomenal, compelling and cohesive record – a cinematic landscape, sonically and lyrically. Carlile is a genre unto itself, offering an important, authentic and vulnerable voice in the musical landscape, an artist who consistently understands and perceives where she wants her place to be in musical history and follows that course through. She has taken her time to create a deliberately thoughtful piece of musical art that builds on By The Way I Forgive You pushing her own artistry yet further, without trying to be anything she is not. Carlile offers the voice of a generation and we are lapping up every word.
