Feature: Candi Carpenter Reveals New Alt-Rock EP and Visual Short Film, ‘Reincarnation’
Image by Derek Oxford
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Every day, Candi Carpenter says, about one percent of your body dies and regenerates. In one lifetime, we become many different people. They have already been several: gospel prodigy in a pastor's family, performing with The Carpenter's across Midwest churches from childhood. High school dropout turned Nashville arrival. Grand Ole Opry collaborator. Billboard country artist. Queer autistic alt-rock shapeshifter. Creator of 2024's Demonology, embraced as an indie cult classic. And now, with six-track EP Reincarnationarriving this September, someone entirely new.
The creative ambition here is staggering and entirely realised. Six songs. Six genre realities. Six music videos connecting into one cohesive visual short film, shot over a week in a warehouse transformed into a trash dump, set in a zombie-filled garbage world with deliberately blunt symbolism and what Carpenter calls a filthy rainbow visual palette. Jane Wiedlin of The Go-Go's appears in the film and describes Carpenter as the brightest dark star she has ever met: a one-of-a-kind treasure, a musical and lyrical magician, relentlessly original and thought-provoking.
The songs move through mortality, capitalism, consciousness, simulation, sexuality, shame and rebellion. 'Reincarnation' meditates on constantly shifting identity. 'Little Freak' imagines love as the one force worth being consumed by. 'The Fear of Being Human Remains' confronts the terror of existing inside a body. 'Inside the Simulation' questions reality through Carpenter's evangelical upbringing, where death once carried the possibility of eternal punishment. 'Biblically Accurate Angel' explores sexuality and the beauty religious doctrine once taught them to fear. 'American God' closes: "I am my own church."
Dolly Parton has called Carpenter one of the greatest singer-songwriters she has ever heard. Brandi Carlile produced and collaborated. Rolling Stone called them devastatingly direct. A co-headlining cross-country tour with Moselle opened September 12th in Nashville.
They are not returning to who they were. They are becoming someone else. Again.
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