Brooke Fraser December 2, 2010

As the sun went down over Indio on the Saturday night of the festival, Fraser found herself watching one of her favorite bands, Fleet Foxes. "Robin Pecknold began to sing and the purity of his voice seemed to melt away every memory of trauma and disillusionment," she recalls. "Then the other voices joined his and it all felt so human and honest. I and everyone around me was enthralled. We were all being spoken to, and we were all listening. It was a moment where I remembered the power of music as a language, a connector. I remembered that I've been given the gift of speaking a particular dialect of this language and realized I didn't have the option of being resigned to silence and I didn't want it."

The experience inspired the song "Coachella" - one of several emotionally resonant and uplifting tunes on Fraser's new album Flags, a dreamy, alternative-pop collection that showcases her agile soprano, lilting melodies, and knack for telling her stories through the lives of vibrant characters on songs like "Betty," "Crows and Locusts," "Jack Kerouac," and "Ice on Her Lashes." "I've never used as many characters or as much narrative in my songwriting as I have on this record," Fraser says. "On my previous albums [2003's What To Do With Daylight and Albertine], I was singing completely as myself, which is why I think I got so burnt out from touring. Albertine was inspired by incredibly significant events and people and every time I'd sing I'd go back to that moment where my heart was ripped open. So singing such heavy songs nearly every night for three years took a toll. On Flags, it's still me speaking, but it's me speaking through the voices of different characters and their stories. It's more survivable."

Fraser wrote the songs in bursts, making writing trips to the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina and Northern California's Bodega Bay before she and her husband decamped from their home in Sydney, Australia, to Los Angeles in February 2010. Once in L.A., Fraser invited a group of local musicians, including guitarists Michael Chaves and David Levita (who played on Albertine), to join her in the studio where they set Fraser's powerful stories to exquisitely textured backdrops of acoustic and electric guitars, bass, drums, piano, strings, horns, and body percussion - creating an earthy, organic feel to the proceedings. The album was engineered and mixed by Joe Zook and produced by Fraser herself.

Official Website: http://www.theelrey.com/view-details.php?id=29149