“I would do things like wake myself upat like 6 o’clock in the morning when I was all tired and hadn’t had my coffeeand I’m all bummed out and grumpy, and sing a song like ‘I Will,’ because Iwanted it to sound crackly, pained and tired,” Carlile explains.
Recreating her emotions in the studiotook work, but finding the right emotion on stage has never been a problem forthe Seattle singer-songwriter, who introduced herself with her 2005 self-titledCD and gained considerable notice with her 2007 follow-up album, The Story.
“The difference between being live andbeing in the studio is that it’s really easy to deliver a gut-wrenching, movingperformance in front of a thousand people that are hurtling their energy at youonto the stage,” Carlile says. “It’s really easy to thrive on that.”
Carlile says that her songs for Give Up the Ghost demanded more from heras a performer in the studio in part because she wanted to look deeper intoherself and use her imagination to create stories and emotions that are morerelatable or dramatic than those on her first two albums.
The songs on Give Up the Ghost show Carlile’s dramatic growth as a songwriter.The album feels strikingly honest, with Carlile’s songsinvolving issues ofrelationships, self-image and friendship, to name a few themesexuding sadness,joy, vulnerability and hope.
The music covers plenty of ground aswell, ranging from intimate and highly tuneful acoustic ballads like “Before ItBreaks,” “I Will” and “Dying Day” to a pair of spirited rockers, “Dreams” and“Caroline,” a sprightly tune with a ragtime-ish piano line played by one ofCarlile’s musical heroes, Elton John.
The way Give Up the Ghost was made was also starkly different from the wayCarlile had approached The Story. Shesays she recorded that album by setting up a stage in the studio and recordingit like a live show.
“We basically played the same guitarsand played through the same amplifiers,” she explains. “It has a cohesivenessthat’s really unique and cool, that most records don’t have nowadays. And it’slive and hardly overdubbed at all, with one drummer and one band.”
But on Give Up the Ghost, she says, “instead of treating the record like ashow, or like an hour-long cohesive project, we wanted to individually treateach song like its own record. So each song from beginning to end was its ownsetup. We’d get in and we’d set up for a song. The drums might go at one end ofthe room today, and you might play through this amp and you might play thisguitar, and I might sing into this microphone and we might use this drummer.Then the next day it’s a completely different room, completely different setup,completely different drummer.”
In a live setting, Carlile is pullingout all the stops to showcase her songs. She recently expanded her band toinclude not only her longtime band mates, guitarist Tim Hanseroth and bassistPhil Hanseroth, but also a cellist, a drummer and, on some songs, akeyboardist. She is playing most of the GiveUp the Ghost songs each night, as well as several songs from The Story, a couple from her self-titledfirst album and a few covers.
“We try to make our show more and moreof an event, orchestrating the show in all different ways,” she says. “It’sjust a really exciting show. We are entertainers and we believe in putting on ashow, and we believe that’s what keeps us on the road.”
BrandiCarlile plays an 8 p.m. show at the Pabst Theater on Thursday, Jan. 21, withopener Katie Herzig.
