Apple cider vinegar Is Pilates for you? 'Ambient gaslighting' 'Main character energy'
LIFE
Brandi Carlile

Carlile warms to 'Firewatcher's Daughter'

Brian Mansfield
USA TODAY
Brandi Carlile will release 'The Firewatcher's Daughter,' her first album for ATO Records, on March 3.

"Nothing scares me more than the stranger at my door who I fail to give shelter, time and worth," Brandi Carlile sings on the song that gives her new album, The Firewatcher's Daughter, its title.

Rock 'n' roll boasts few songs about missed chances to offer hospitality, but this one fits right into The Firewatcher's Daughter (* * * ½ out of four) and its desperate desire for relationship. That desire manifests itself in such love songs as I Belong to You and Wilder (We're Chained), as well as in the tight-knit, three-part harmonies Carlile sings with her longtime collaborators, twin brothers Tim and Phil Hanseroth, on Eye.

Between the recording of Carlile's last album, 2012's Bear Creek and now, she and the Hanseroths all have become parents. So while her songs have always possessed a spiritual quality, going back to such numbers as The Story or Bear Creek's That Wasn't Me, on The Firewatcher's Daughter, now she's examining the bonds that hold people together. Sometimes, those bonds seem loose, as they do on single Wherever Is Your Heart, where home isn't so much a physical location as it is the heart of a distant love.

At other times, they seem unbreakable: In Wilder, Carlile sings of the connection between a parent and child as a chain. "Maybe I was meant to be under your lock and key," she sings in the quiet and lovely Beginning to Feel the Years, which has a melody that builds with Roy Orbison's sense of drama.

Carlile has made some polished music during her 10-year recording career, including a 2011 live album recorded with the Seattle Symphony. But The Firewatcher's Daughter has a unfettered excitement, whether it's on the Fleetwood Mac-like fingerpicked folk-pop of Wilder or on Mainstream Kid, which sports the recklessness and reverb of rockabilly. In Alibi, Carlile has a conspiratorial gleam in her eye as she sings, "If you're good at telling lies, you could be my alibi, and I won't have to atone for my sins."

The sole cover, a remake of the Avett Brothers' Murder in the City, suits the tone of the album, with its pleas to forgo revenge in favor of expressing love. In the face of death, or simply when encountering a stranger in need, The Firewatcher's Daughter is an album with a big heart, one that responds with love, not fear.

Download:Wherever Is Your Heart, Beginning to Feel the Years, Wilder (We're Chained)

Featured Weekly Ad