Accomplished singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile is ready to share her eighth studio album, Returning to Myself. Announced today (September 3), the project is set for release on October 24 via Interscope Records/Lost Highway, and serves as her first solo record in four years.
The 10-track LP was co-produced by Carlile, Aaron Dessner, Justin Vernon, and Andrew Watt and features musical contributions from longtime bandmates, Phil and Tim Hanseroth, SistaStrings’ Monique and Chauntee Ross, Blake Mills, Josh Klinghoffer, Chad Smith, Matt Chamberlain, Dave Mackay, Stewart Cole, Rob Moose, and Mark Isham.
To coincide with the album announcement, Carlile has also shared the album’s title track, which echoes the project’s core theming of personal reflection and introspection. In the statement below, the 11-time Grammy Award winner opens up about what inspired the creation of “Returning to Myself” and how it represents her current chapter in life:
“I’m not my favorite person to spend my time with. 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.
I prefer to double, triple, and quadruple down on co-dependency, which I’ve come to learn that outside of 12-Step programs and junior high school relationships, isn’t really that unhealthy at all…
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. That a guest can be a deep lean-in over a cheap bottle of wine or simply an eyebrow raise 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.
People want to be together in silence more than we allow in our time. It’s falling deeply in love with the car wheels on a gravel road. The possibility of the visitor. The “not being alone-ness” of it all…
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.“
Fans can expect more details about Carlile’s upcoming record, along with tour dates in support of her new music, to be shared in the weeks to come. This weekend, she’ll take the stage with her bandmates at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in scenic Morrison, Colorado, for three sold-out shows, helping to mark the kickoff of a new creative era for Carlile.
Watch the official music video for “Returning to Myself,” directed by Floria Sigismondi, below:
Brandi Carlile, Returning to Myself
Track List:
- “Returning to Myself”
- “Human”
- “A Woman Oversees”
- “A War with Time”
- “Anniversary”
- “Church & State”
- “Joni”
- “You Without Me”
- “No One Knows Us”
- “A Long Goodbye”
