Brandi Carlile has announced her first solo album in four years, “Returning to Myself,” set to come out Oct. 24. Carlile’s co-producers on the project are Andrew Watt, Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon, the latter of Bon Iver fame.
The first single from the album, its title track, was released concurrently with the album announcement on Wednesday morning, as was a music video directed by Floria Sigismondi.
“Returning to Myself” finds the 11-time Grammy winner on a new label, or labels, both of them part of Universal Music Group. The album will be a joint release from Interscope and Lost Highway, the latter being a freshly revived Americana imprint that is now part of the Interscope fold.
It’s her first release on her own since 2021’s “In These Silent Days,” although earlier this year, Carlile and Elton John issued a collaborative album, “Who Believes in Angels?” Carlile’s new single arrives just four days after the end of the eligibility period for the 2026 Grammys, so the two projects will not compete for awards.
Carlile worked with her three co-producers separately and also, at times, collectively. She collaborated with Dessner (the National member who has produced Taylor Swift and Gracie Abrams) at his Long Pond studio in the Hudson Valley. Meanwhile, she worked with Watt (Pearl Jam, the Rolling Stones, Lady Gaga) at Henson Studios in Hollywood. In a few cases, Dessner and Watt worked in tandem with her. Vernon joined as the album’s fourth producer on the track “Human,” but he also added vocals on the track “A War With Time” and contributed instrumental work throughout the project.
Beyond the three star co-producers, instrumental support comes from her longtime collaborators the Hanseroth Twins plus SistaStrings (Monique and Chauntee Ross), drummers Matt Chamberlain and Chad Smith, and keyboardist Josh Klinghoffer.
The title song of “Returning to Myself” reflects the idea that Carlile is at least momentarily stepping aside from her role as musical enabler — someone who has famously supported Joni Mitchell, collaborated with Elton and produced a Grammy-winning Tanya Tucker and other artists — to focus on standing alone and looking more inward. But in that song, she also debates whether focusing on oneself after a period of sharing is necessary, selfish, or perhaps a bit of both.
“I think people are going to hear that song in different ways,” she said. “Some are going to hear it as a call to return to themselves. Some are going to hear it as a justification not to. And I love that about it because it is a deeply conflicting feeling. There is no a-ha moment in that song. It’s just a contemplation of, ‘Is enlightenment aloneness or is enlightenment learning togetherness and sacrificial love?’”
Among the song titles that will intrigue fans most on first blush is “Joni,” a paean to her friend and hero Joni Mitchell. One that will already be familiar to her followers is “You Without Me,” a version of which was included on the collaborative duo album with Elton John they put out earlier this year; the rendition included on her solo album is an all-new recording.
The remaining tracks on the 10-song album are “A Woman Oversees,” “Anniversary,” “Church & State,” “No One Knows Us” and “A Long Goodbye.”
As far as musical reference points for the album, Carlile says in promotional material, “One thing that came to mind early on was Emmylou Harris’ groundbreaking album ‘Wrecking Ball.’ I’ve loved that album my whole life and referenced it musically in the studio more times than I can count, but I never contemplated it conceptually. I don’t know if Daniel Lanois or Emmy would echo my take on it, but I see it as a defining moment for Emmy because of where she was in her career and life,and specifically how the album sounded against the landscape it emerged into. … I wanted to make something that was undeniably and willfully me. It’s amazing how many people it takes to do that sometimes! But that’s kind of the point. it took many souls to make ‘Wrecking Ball’ but they were coming from a supportive mindset. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to be carried and still end up on your own two feet.”
Carlile released a longer statement offering thoughts about the title track.
“I’m not my favorite person to spend my time with,” she wrote. “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.”
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