Brandi Carlile has never been one to take a break and stop searching. In the past four years alone, she’s produced Grammy-winning records, shared stages with her heroes, and even earned an Oscar nomination alongside Elton John. But now, the 11-time Grammy winner is turning the lens inward on her eighth studio album, Returning To Myself.

Returning To Myself is Carlile’s first solo project since 2021’s In These Silent Days, and likely her most introspective work yet. Clocking in at a concise ten songs, the record was produced by a powerhouse creative circle that mirrors Carlile’s widening artistic orbit — Andrew Watt, Aaron Dessner, and Justin Vernon — while grounding itself in the unmistakable openness that’s always defined her. Longtime friends Phil and Tim Hanseroth return, joined by SistaStrings, Blake Mills, Chad Smith, Matt Chamberlain, and Rob Moose.

The album’s title isn’t a triumphal declaration, it’s a reluctant admission. “I’m not my favorite person to spend my time with,” Carlile confessed. “Returning to myself is not just lonely, but painfully boring. So much so that I’m actually not interested in doing it. And that’s why I will.” That paradox sits at the album’s core. The tension between solitude and togetherness, between independence and the quiet comfort of codependency. “Why is it heroic to untether,” she asks, “when the tense work of togetherness is so much more interesting?” It’s a universal question that ripples through the record.

Carlile’s reflections trace a life lived in constant motion, from her childhood in a single-wide trailer in rural Washington to raising her children on a tour bus. She sings of the “not-being-alone-ness” found in the simple sound of car wheels on gravel, or in the company of someone close enough to hear you breathe. It’s an album about learning to exist in the space between connection and solitude and realizing that the two might be the same thing. Following her acclaimed collaboration with Elton John on Who Believes In Angels? and her celebrated production work for Joni Mitchell and Brandy Clark, Returning To Myself marks a deliberate step back into her own story, one about an artist stripping away the grandeur to reveal the heart that’s always been beating beneath it.