In These Silent Days

I always want to engage the listener in a question instead of an answer. That’s why it’s In These Silent Days. It’s a question: What did you learn? What did you make of yourself? What did you lose? What happened to you in this time? I want to invite people to reflect, because it’s such a pivotal time in human history, and a real spiritual upheaval for so many people in really positive and really negative, complicated ways.

Writing that book [“Broken Horses”] gave me this really linear understanding of ‘here’s how I started and here’s how I am, and these are the things in between that made it so,’ and it was such clarity. This was the first time that I knew what I was writing the songs about while I was writing them. I had so much more to pull from, so much more sensory material, than this abstract half-truth.

I realised how much affirmation I get from strangers—that life-affirming response that you get from an audience when you perform. If everybody could just have a job where they just go to scream and stomp all the time, I think they would probably find themselves a little more well-rounded.

—via Apple Music

Yes, the album was awarded “Best Americana Album” for the 65th Annual Grammy Awards on February 5, 2023.