BRANDI CARLILE: Returning To Myself (EMI)
Verdict: Elton’s protégée takes flight
The Midas touch of Elton John worked wonders for Brandi Carlile back in April. A highly respected singer-songwriter in her American homeland, she was largely unknown to British fans until her duets album with the Rocketman, Who Believes In Angels?, thrust her into the limelight as it topped the UK charts and spawned a prime-time ITV Saturday night special.
Elton brought out the showgirl in a singer who grew up in the trailer parks of Washington state and built her reputation singing simple folk and country songs. He inspired her to swing for the fences and embrace her sparkly-suited instincts on a record dominated by floor-shaking rock and roll.
Brandi rose magnificently to the task, and was far from overshadowed as she shared the microphone with her all-time hero.
Showgirl: 11-time Grammy winner Brandi performing in Italy during the summer
She takes a different approach on Returning To Myself, her first solo release in four years.
Carlile, 44, occasionally opens up and rekindles the high-octane swagger of the duets album, but the overall mood is more subtle, with intimate folk songs and relatively routine soft-rock numbers augmented by musicians such as Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and The National’s Aaron Dessner, both of whom worked with Taylor Swift on the latter’s folky lockdown albums, Folklore and Evermore.
That could lead listeners to assume Returning To Myself is an introspective affair, but that’s not the case. Despite a title that suggests Brandi is looking inwards for inspiration, the album is a warm, inviting celebration of togetherness rather than solitude. As she points out: ‘I have absolutely no interest in returning to myself.’
Such a life-affirming outlook extends to her lyrics. ‘Oh my darlings, how I love you,’ she sings on the title track, before warning that too much self-analysis is ‘a lonely thing to do’. She goes on to reflect on her own mortality, notably on A War With Time (where she’s joined by Vernon, Dessner and album producer Andrew Watt), but the underlying message is one of making every moment count.
Rocketman and his No 1 fan: Carlile and Elton, with whom she recorded an album of duets, Who Believes In Angels?, that went on to top the charts and prompt a TV special
She’s in Heaven: Carlile at legendary London nightclub, after a Q&A session with fans
Carlile lives with her English wife Catherine Shepherd and the couple’s two daughters, Evangeline and Elijah, and she addresses the twin challenges of parenthood and long-term relationships. On You Without Me, included here at Elton’s insistence after originally featuring on the duets album, she sings in hushed tones about watching her eldest daughter grow up. Anniversary warns of the dangers in allowing an established marriage to lose its spark.
Her other great mentor is Joni Mitchell. It was Brandi who encouraged Mitchell to return to the stage after a life-threatening brain aneurysm, and she pays a witty, affectionate tribute to the Canadian folk and jazz legend on Joni, a song that salutes Mitchell with a true story of how the latter regularly meets friends for lunch dates in a graveyard. ‘I knew a wild woman, she threw a party on her grave.’ sings Carlile. ‘She went there tapping her cane and sipping champagne.’
She returns to her central theme of seizing the day on closing track A Long Goodbye. A string of finely-drawn vignettes, including one about a silly row with her wife over the merits of Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill album, it’s fleshed out by the guitars of Watt and Vernon. ‘Let the wind blow all night, it’s only life after all,’ she concludes.
Having topped the charts with Elton, her first UK solo hit surely beckons.
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