Brandi Carlile photographed by Collier Schorr

When it comes to most things in life, Brandi Carlile does not mess about.

She is steadfast, dedicated and true. And when it comes to Christmas, Brandi does not fuck around.

“Oh my god, Cate, my Christmas fixation is another level. Like, I probably need help for it.”

Our Zoom call starts only an hour after my own Christmas tree – roughly 3.5 feet tall – is delivered to my flat. With zero lights and zero decorations, it’s giving... Charlie Brown. Brandi immediately spots it over my shoulder and kindly says she likes my tree the minute our call begins, which is generous, considering what it actually looks like. I ask her how her light-hanging situation is going – which began earlier than most.

“I’ve got maybe 30,000 lights on every single outbuilding, every roofline, every window, the whole house is covered in lights. And then I’ve got Christmas trees everywhere. It’s crazy. We make a big deal out of it.”

Despite my job title, speaking directly to an artist that I admire as much as Brandi Carlile is actually a very rare opportunity. Her music, the way she moves through the world, her writing, her philanthropy, her intergenerational mentorship of other artists… there is a lot to be struck by.

It was the way Brandi wrote about her relationship with music and creativity in her 2021 memoir Broken Horses, that had a profound, personal impact on me. I actually first got into Brandi’s music by way of listening to to her audiobook – which then set off a chain reaction within my own life. But before I (perhaps embarrassingly) tell her this, we’re discussing what Brandi is currently up to, rather than just the mad Christmas prep.

She’s been knee-deep in the promotion cycle of Returning To Myself, her critically-acclaimed and chart-topping album – and preparing for her tour, and most importantly her Girls Just Wanna Weekend annual festival in Mexico this coming weekend, which features The Chicks. No big deal.

“Everything’s feeling really musical right now,” she says.

Returning To Myself is an extremely personal and vulnerable album. It feels like people say this quite regularly – but with Brandi, it’s true. I asked her how it’s felt talking about this showcase of vulnerability so much throughout its promotion cycle.

“At 44, it’s hard for anything to feel new. You know, one of the reasons why I like to go over to the UK and Europe and go on tour is that it makes me feel discovered again or like new in some way. That there’s like a clean slate. And making my quote-unquote ‘vulnerable album’ – and everybody has one, and there won’t be another one – this is the one in my career that is like this.

″[This album] is something that I did backwards of how I’ve done everything else in my life. Whenever we’ve written songs as a band, we do all of the construction of that song before we record it. And in this case, we didn’t. I wrote and recorded these songs and now I’m about to go with my band and start constructing them or reconstructing from the record. So, in a way, I need projects. I need big things in front of me now that the Christmas lights are done. And I can’t wait to get into the kind of details of these songs with Tim and Phil [Hanseroth, Brandi’s long-time collaborators and band members] and the rest of our band and start constructing a show, you know? That’s, that is my kind of core passion right now.”

“Like most things, it’s happened to me after 40. And I can’t tell you how much I love that. I can’t tell you how much I love that I’m not 26.”

Brandi’s next tour kicks off with a series of US shows in February, including two nights at Madison Square Garden, and comes over to Europe and the UK again in October, opening with a show in Dublin.

I first saw Brandi Carlile in concert back in June 2024, at the Drury Lane Theatre in London – a smaller, much more intimate venue than, say, the Royal Albert Hall. It was her first show in London after the pandemic and her Grammy wins for In These Silent Days, and in short, it was a big moment. It was the first time her community of fans had been all together like that in years.

The set had many acoustic numbers, and sounded more like the In The Canyon Haze version of In These Silent Days. She covered Linda Rondstat’s Long Long Time. For her encore, she appeared on a balcony playing with the Hanseroth twins singing Cannonball. Her wife Catherine joined her onstage. The night was incredibly special – you could see and feel from Brandi what the show, and her return to the UK, must have meant to her and Catherine.

I’m not a religious person – but I believe in the magic of music, and what happens in a room when live music is playing for people who all feel and experience it at the same time. That night with Brandi on stage truly felt like a god-like, ethereal experience. She was in the moment, every step of the way, and her fans were right there along with her. As were the incredible musicians on stage with her, including the incomparable SistaStrings.

“I think I........

© HuffPost