Willi Carlisle Practices Radical Empathy on Critterland

Willi Carlisle has been described as a folk singer who “speaks his truth,” which is almost right. More accurately, the Arkansas singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist is on a rambling, itinerant quest to live his truth—that is, to live a way that’s true to himself, which ends up reflected in songs that often display a radical sense of empathy. That sensibility underpinned his 2022 album Peculiar, Missouri, and a similar idea is at the heart of his latest, Critterland.

Carlisle’s third album doesn’t have the same sweeping scope as its predecessor, which was boisterous, messy and open-hearted on songs embracing a certain worldview: “Your Heart’s a Big Tent,” say, or “I Won’t Be Afraid.” In some ways, though, he digs deeper on Critterland, an album that is more about making the best of heavy circumstances. On 10 new tracks, Carlisle explores themes of addiction, suicide and what the press notes call “generational trauma.” The latter description presumably refers to “The Arrangements,” where a narrator who was estranged from his father finds himself reflecting on a troubled legacy when the old man dies. Carlisle sings in a voice more somber than usual, accompanied by acoustic fingerpicking and slashes of slide guitar.

Much of the time, Carlisle sings as if he’s about to burst with all the things he wants to say. That’s certainly the case on the title track, which also opens the album. A roiling banjo injects a sense of urgency, and Carlisle sings in a full-throated tenor punctuated by gusts of harmonica—as he celebrates a rustic way of life built around love. He wraps grief in wry tones on “Jaybird,” where the narrator sings to someone close to him who committed suicide. “It’s no surprise your body never was found / I find your body all over this town,” he sings over a blend of acoustic guitar, banjo and slide guitar. Later, as he brings the tune to a close, Carlisle lets his voice build as he repeats, “Who am I to sing before I know the song? / I’m always going to sing before I know the song.”

Those lines are probably the most autobiographical description of himself that Carlisle has ever written. The subtext gets to the core of what he’s all about: Community, in the sense of people coming together to make sense of a frenetic, divisive world and maybe finding—or creating—a place for themselves in it. For Carlisle, community means singing, and singing means healing from all the hurts we inflict on each other, or that life imposes upon us. That idea resonates in themes of forgiveness on “Dry County Dust,” a mournful song with quiet guitar and glimmers of pedal steel, about folks trying their best to get by. It’s there on “The Great Depression,” too, in the way Carlisle juxtaposes the promise of American freedom and the reality. With intertwining acoustic guitars, banjo and harmonica, it’s a bittersweet song that balances cultural shortcomings with our ability to take pleasure in life’s small happinesses. If those are contradictory impulses, Willi Carlisle seems game to work through them the best way he knows how: by singing.

Read our recent profile on Willi Carlisle, our most recent pick for the Best of What’s Next, here.

Eric R. Danton has been contributing to Paste since 2013. His work has also appeared in Rolling Stone, The Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe and Pitchfork, among other publications. Follow him on Mastodon or visit his website.