Singer-songwriter Carrie Newcomer will release her 12th studio recording this spring. A Permeable Life, produced by Paul Mahern, will be out on April 1 from Available Light Records, distributed by MRI/Sony RED Music. She also will release a companion book, A Permeable Life: Poems and Essays.
Newcomer has attracted a devoted following with her warm voice, exquisite melodies, and an irreverent yet spiritual view of the world. As in the work of poets Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry, Newcomer’s songs are based in the ordinary, and infused with images from the natural world.
“A Permeable Life is about what presses out from the heart, what comes in at a slant and what shimmers below the surface of things,” Newcomer says. “To live permeably is to be openhearted and audacious, to risk showing up as our truest self, and embracing a willingness to be astonished.”
On the album, Newcomer’s signature deep voice—which the Austin American-Statesman called “as rich as Godiva chocolate”—takes on a quiet conversational tone, close and intimate. Open and elegant arrangements showcase lyrics that balance introspection and interior monologue with love and fascination for the shared human story in songs such as:
• “Every Little Bit of It,” “A Light in the Window,” and “Writing You a Letter,” in which small experiences take on the glow of knowing we do not live days, but moments.
• “The Ten O’clock Line” and “Abide” (co-written with author Parker J. Palmer), explore themes of loss and new thresholds, musing on the possibility that what may look like a hole in one’s life, may be only a space.
• “A Room at the Table” and “An Empty Chair” call us to allow the troubled world to transform and move us to action.
• “Forever Ray” and “Don’t Put Me On Hold” reflect Newcomer’s mischievous humor, the first celebrating love and lawn ornaments and the latter bemoaning customer service lines.
“This album was a real labor of love,” Newcomer says. “It required me to stretch my artistic edges. The vocals on this album were sung as if I were sitting at the kitchen table with the listener. It gave the songs an intimacy and authority. To me, they feel fearlessly tender.”
About Carrie Newcomer
Recording artist Carrie Newcomer’s work cuts across secular and spiritual boundaries. She has had many artistic collaborations with notable authors such as Parker J. Palmer, Barbara Kingsolver, Jill Bolte Taylor, Philip Gulley, Scott Russell Sanders and Rabbi Sandy Sasso. She facilitates workshops on songwriting, creative writing, spirituality, vocation and activism. Newcomer, who tours throughout the U.S. and Europe, has also toured with Alison Krauss.
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