Freeway by Pieta Brown

Recorded at April Base studio and co-produced by Bon Iver drummer and acclaimed solo artist S. Carey, Pieta Brown’s lush new album, Freeway, is a delicate yet forceful reckoning with change that’s marked by the push and pull of unabashed intimacy and a slow-burning intensity. Brown cut the album with an all-star band that included Carey, bassist Mike Lewis (Bon Iver), and guitarist Jeremy Yivisaker (Andrew Bird), and the resulting recordings reflect the foursome’s seemingly telepathic bond, a deeply organic chemistry fueled by a shared passion for emotional exploration and sonic discovery. Due out September 20 on Righteous Babe Records, Freeway is Brown’s most experimental collection to date, but it’s also her most confident and direct, an honest accounting of bittersweet endings and hopeful beginnings, of painful loss and traces of liberation in the aftermath, all captured here with a raw spontaneity and fierce self-assurance.

Hailed as a "self-styled poetess, folk goddess and country waif" by the BBC, over the course of the past decade-and-a-half, she’s released eight critically lauded records, prompting NPR to applaud her "moody, ethereal" songwriting, and the New York Times to praise her “sweet, smoky voice.” Her work garners praise and support from a wide array of peers and mentors, including legendary producer Don Was, filmmaker Wim Wenders, and Bon Iver mastermind Justin Vernon, who called Brown’s 2014 album Paradise Outlaw his “favorite recording made at our studio.”