Culture

During the week of the winter solstice last December, Allison Russell stood in a large circle of “goddesses,” chanting and singing together to conjure communal joy out of thin air. Drums, guitars and strings joined her and her circle of “chosen sisters” as they celebrated “being back in our bodies.”
If that sounds more like a new-age spiritual exercise than a recording session, Russell will be the first one to tell you that two things can be true at the same time. “It ended up being very witchy and woo-woo and wonderful,” she tells Billboard. “We just got to be so present and say ‘F–k oppressors telling us we’re not gorgeous and perfect as we are.’”

That sentiment was the leading ethos behind the creation of The Returner, Russell’s spellbinding sophomore LP (out Friday, Sept. 8 via Fantasy Records). The folk star wanted to create an album that didn’t look back on the pain of the past — she had already done that on her outstanding 2021 debut album Outside Child — but rather firmly planted itself in the present and called for a much-needed celebration. Or, as she more poetically puts it, The Returner is about “stealing joy from the teeth of turmoil.”

To accomplish that goal, Russell ventured outside of the world of Americana music that made her one of the fastest-rising folk stars of the last few years. Taking a “rhythm-first” approach to creating the new sound, the singer-songwriter and Dim Star — the production duo of Russell’s partner JT Nero and Drew Lindsay — employed elements of funk, rock, disco and pop to further bolster her folk roots and give The Returner a fresh new sound.

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Russell says that this approach came about in part because she spent the last few years getting to tour internationally for the first time. “We toured in a lot of places where English isn’t the first language,” she said. “We realized that there’s a transcendence that comes when you allow yourself to feel music with your whole body. A lot of the demos started with us hearing the polyrhythmic layers of groove within some of the things that JT [Nero] and I were writing. That informs melody, that informs even the syllables, the words that are chosen.”

After spending three months working with Dim Star to create demos that achieved something close to the sound they were looking for, Russell recounts being contacted by her label in late 2022 and told that, in order to release an album in 2023, they would need her master by the end of the year thanks to ongoing delays in vinyl production.

Where most artists would panic, Russell felt relief — booking six days at L.A.’s Henson Recording Studios (a space “presided over by my hero, Kermit the Frog,” Russell quips), the multi-hyphenate embraced the do-or-die nature of the sessions. “We recorded Outside Child in four days, so we were like, ‘Oh, we have six whole days in the studio? That’s great,’” she recalls. “It actually felt magical — Joni [Mitchell] recorded Blue there, Joni recorded Court and Spark there, Carole King recorded Tapestry there, Tina Turner and Cyndi Lauper blew everything off the top of ‘We Are the World’ there. There were all of these good ghosts in the walls.”

In order to bring the expansive new sound of The Returner to life, Russell brought together a 16-person band of women to the week-long studio session. Featuring artists like SistaStrings, Joy Clark, Elenna Canlas, Elizabeth Pupo-Walker and a dozen others, the group became the engine through which Russell and Dim Star engineered their creative vision.

“The magic of this circle is that everybody is such a high-level, multifaceted artist; everybody’s a lead singer, everybody’s a writer, everybody’s a composer, everybody’s a multi-instrumentalist,” she said. “So when we go in the studio, it’s with this level of trust — and because of that, the album ends up being a musical conversation in real time with these brilliant artists that I feel so privileged to be working with.”

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Throughout her conversation with Billboard, Russell refers to the femme-focused troupe as the “Rainbow Coalition,” a name she also interchangeably uses for the community of artists she surrounds herself with and her fans. While the name may evoke a sense of LGBTQ-centric idealism that Russell shares with those she accepts as her chosen family, the singer points to the term’s long history for context.

Before the name was adopted into a larger cultural context, the original Rainbow Coalition was formed in 1969 Chicago by Fred Hampton, the deputy chairman of the Black Panther Party. Hampton helped bring together the Young Patriots (made up of poor Southern whites), the Young Lords (made up of Puerto Rican migrants) and street gangs throughout the city to work together towards social change.

While the original coalition fell apart after Hampton’s assassination in December 1969, Russell says that the core organizing principle of the original Rainbow Coalition remains a cornerstone of her own worldview today. “Any of us, globally, who are interested in the business of harm reduction, and of pushing for equality versus inequality — that’s the Rainbow Coalition,” she says. “There’s so few places where we can gather people from all different kinds of beliefs, histories, ethnicities and heritages in joyful assembly — but we have that in playing and listening to live music together.”

It certainly helps Russell’s righteous cause that she finds herself in storied company — in the years since she began working as a solo artist, the Montreal-born artist has become a contemporary of superstars like Brandi Carlile, Annie Lennox, Chaka Khan, and even Joni Mitchell, who brought her onstage earlier this year for her Joni Jam concert at The Gorge.

“Community is vital [in the music industry], both in terms of sharing resources and also just artistically,” Russell offers. “Getting to be a part of that event, where we were all there in service of Joni and in reverence and celebration of our elder was the most inspiring, transcendent, beautiful thing to get to witness and to be a part of.”

After being welcomed with open arms by artists like Carlile and Mitchell into the industry, Russell is now laser-focused on doing her part to leave the world a better place than she found it. One way she intends to do that is by fighting back against the ongoing wave of anti-LGBTQ legislation sweeping through the U.S., targeting healthcare and privacy rights for the transgender community, as well as First Amendment rights for drag performers.

Even broaching the subject of anti-LGBTQ legislation immediately prompts Russell’s indignant fury. “It is domestic legislative terrorism,” she says, her friendly smile dropping into a grimace. “It’s so serious, and we sleepwalk through it at our peril, right? This is some Third Reich s–t, and we cannot allow it to continue; we must fight back. And that’s what I’m talking about when it comes to the Rainbow Coalition — it’s all of us who stand at any intersections of the margin, anyone who loves us, and anyone who stands with us.”

Russell, believing in the power of live music to bring people together, decided to channel her anger into action. Teaming up with Jason Isbell and number of LGBTQ non-profit organizations in Tennessee, Russell co-organized Love Rising, the star-studded benefit concert that took place just weeks after the state passed laws banning gender-affirming care for minors and banning drag shows in public spaces. Featuring performances from superstars like Maren Morris, Sheryl Crow, the Brothers Osborne, Hozier and plenty more, the event was a runaway success — especially considering they raised over $500,000 for LGBTQ charities in the area.

Looking at all the artists who came out to support Love Rising — especially many of the straight artists who chose to speak up for the LGBTQ community — gives Russell a sense of hope for the future. “It’s exactly what we need,” she says. “It’s people like Hayley [Williams] taking a red eye flight to come back from opening for Taylor Swift, because she said she’d rather die than not be there to support the trans and drag community in Tennessee. These incredible allies are so important.”

But the work is far from over — Russell says she plans to use her upcoming tour for The Returner as on opportunity to work with organizations like the Human Rights Campaign and Headcount to register concert-goers to vote in the 2024 election and learn more about the attacks against the LGBTQ community. “It’s all hands on deck,” she resolves.

She’s also not taking her eyes off the music industry at large — amid the rising tide of harmful rhetoric, Russell says that a number of fellow artists in the industry have remained “deafeningly silent” on the topic, specifically in the mainstream country space. Russell doesn’t name anyone in particular, in part because she doesn’t want to add to “the algorithm of problematic artists,” but also because, as she says, she’s not trying to rehabilitate the “empathy deficit” she sees in the genre.

“I’m not interested in fixing the toxic white supremacy and masculinity of the mainstream. I think it’s a waste of energy,” she says. “I’m much more interested in building the beloved community of people that are ready to show up and do this work together, that believe in equality. The others will come along eventually.”

In large part, that is the message of The Returner — it takes a village to make deep, meaningful change in the world around you, and Russell is ready to build that village from the ground up.