When She Returns: Allison Russell Continues the Story

Following her harrowing solo debut, the luminous singer/songwriter throws a dance party on the other side of trauma.

Allison Russell - The Returner

How can you possibly follow an album like this?

That’s one of the questions I was left with after hearing Outside Child, the unnerving, autobiographical deep dive from singer, songwriter, clarinetist, and banjo player Allison Russell. Equal parts memoir and exorcism, the album recounted a childhood shattered by physical and sexual abuse, its courage and candor immediately rocketing Russell into the upper echelon of the Americana scene. It remains an indelible work of vulnerability, the kind of superhero origin story nobody should have to tell. Like Jason Isbell’s Southeastern sobriety saga, it’s the kind of story that follows its narrator around, coloring everything that comes after it. Needless to say, it’s also not what you’d call a party album.

The implicit message of Russell’s follow-up, The Returner, is that trauma isn’t something we ever completely leave behind; to paraphrase her liner notes from the previous album, we can be healed but we can’t necessarily be cured. The new record distills the essence of survivor’s joy, celebrating Russell’s reclamation of self-worth after being robbed of it as a child. It’s the second act of a redemptive arc that she began on the previous album, maybe especially when she addressed her abusive stepfather directly and declared that he’d taken nothing from her. Now here she is, relishing all the good gifts that her abuser couldn’t claim as his own— love and family, music and community, movement of body and freedom of mind. Yet still she counts the cost: “All that my body can never forget/ why do good things make me cry?”

Despite these dark undercurrents— scars Russell carries with her from what she christens the “Shadowlands”— this one actually is a party album, at least by comparison. She produced it herself, along with her husband and songwriting partner JT Nero and Birds of Chicago bandmate Drew Lindsay, and she plays with an all-female band that includes cinematic string arrangements from Larissa Maestro and SistaStrings. Many songs combine psychedelic filigrees with speaker-rattling, body-moving bass, a combination that recalls nothing so much as Parade-era Prince— right down to the snippets of French that Russell scatters across the album. (She even recruits Wendy and Lisa to play on the album, making The Returner’s Revolution-ary connections all the more explicit.) Elsewhere, on “All Without Within,” Russell conjures the swaggering, live-band disco sound of Chic, Change, or— for younger listeners— Beyonce’s “Cuff It.” “Stay Right Here” boasts an especially dramatic orchestral backdrop, a bit of flair that wouldn’t feel out of place on a Jessie Ware record.

The album’s bright colors are captured in a vivid mix; it feels like the previous record’s black-and-white noir has been replaced with hi-definition Technicolor, song after sound saturated with sound, movement, laughter, and joy. Opener “Springtime” heralds Russell’s joyful intentions with the gentle plucking of strings, evocative of a bleak winter thawing into greenery and warmth. The arrangement transforms into psychedelic travel music— think Willy Wonka’s steamboat moving into the wondrous heart of his factory— as Russell hymns a new chapter, the springtime of her present tense.

Of course, simply turning the page doesn’t mean the past is fully past. The Returner bears witness to a woman who inhabits the present with peace and gratitude, but still wakes up with the occasional nightmare, and has the muscle memory of trauma forever imprinted on her form; it’s a paradox that she brings to the fore on “Stay Right Here,” a song that revels in joyful motion but never forgets that the body keeps the score. On one of the album’s most evocative songs, “Demons,” Russell admits that she’s still beset by powers and principalities; if she can’t exorcise them completely she can at least rebuke them with truth and confession (“look ‘em in the face/ they don’t like how sunlight tastes”) and even conscript them into service: “We put ‘em on the bus but we don’t let them drive/ turn them all into Freedom Riders.” Russell co-wrote these songs with Nero, an extraordinarily gifted lyricist who can’t resist quoting other pop songs, anchoring personal narrative in pop culture referents; “Demons” ends with a nod to Outkast, effectively sampling “Rosa Parks” to contextualize Russell’s own story of liberation.

The Freedom Riders allusion hones in on another of the album’s big themes: How surviving trauma and abuse can provide a springboard for advocacy and activism. If Outside Child was the origin story, The Returner lingers long on the resultant superpowers, including a heightened zeal for justice on behalf of the captive and the oppressed. (She who has been shown great mercy shows great mercy to others.) In “Snake Life,” what doesn’t kill her maker her stronger on behalf of those who are weak. In “Requiem,” the album-ending singalong featuring Brandi Carlisle, she laments the children whose arcs never bend toward redemption. Most potent of all is the banjo-led “Eve Was Black,” which imagines an Edenic paradise shattered by White Supremacy— something Russell links to jealousy, lust, and self-hatred in equal measure. Throughout the album Russell demonstrates a heart for children everywhere but hers in particular; in “Stay Right Here” she contemplates escaping into fantasy, but instead chooses to stay rooted in the present: “Wanna hear my daughter laughing/ She can hear her daughter laughing.”

The appeal to Eden isn’t the only biblical motif on The Returner; after all, we’re talking about an artist whose two primary themes are lost innocence and second life. Resurrection imagery abounds, like in “Shadowlands,” where abuse survivors emerge from behind a shroud of darkness, inhabiting glorified bodies and possessing the keys of life and death. “Snake Life” and “Rag Doll” offer similar perspective. It’s notable that Russell sings about being saved without ever identifying a savior, and I’d argue that a lyric or two veer a little too close to generic self-empowerment. But then there’s “The Returner,” a feel-good soul ballad that chronicles the aftermath of trauma, giving new meaning to the term quiet storm. Here, Russell sings as someone who’s back from the other side, worthy of all the world’s goodness and beauty, come to proclaim joy and solidarity to those still suffering. Kinds sounds like someone I know from the Bible. Such glad tidings make The Returner every bit the equal of Outside Child— a precious second chapter that promises many more to follow.

Songs to Sample: “Springtime,” “Stay Right Here,” “Eve Was Black”

The Hurst Review: 8.5 out of 10 (but a straight 10 for the amazing album cover)