A fiercely independent artist with a voice both instantly recognizable and emotionally unflinching, Rachael Yamagata first emerged in the early 2000s with her critically acclaimed debut Happenstance. Over the next two decades, she built a loyal following on the strength of her raw, cinematic songwriting and soul-baring live performances – releasing a string of beloved records including Elephants…Teeth Sinking Into Heart, Chesapeake, and Tightrope Walker. Known for pairing bruising vulnerability with wry humor and unabashed grit, she’s worked with artists as varied as Liz Phair, Toots and The Maytals, Ray LaMontagne, Ryan Adams, and Bright Eyes, while consistently forging her own path outside the major label system. 

Now, she’s returned with her most cohesive and intentional work yet. Starlit Alchemy isn’t a collection of singles or an algorithmic playlist; it’s a “deep dive record,” as Yamagata calls it – a body of work meant to be heard in full. “I always knew it was going to be a one song-flows-into-the-next album,” she says. “The songs started as a compulsion to just express what I was going through and witnessing - only later did I realize the more cohesive story. It became a map made after the journey, not before. But it’s all in there.”

The story – one of personal loss and universal rediscovery – took shape slowly, over a few years of restructuring and creative risk. “It began as a stream of consciousness record and I actually did the first demos as a mini movie soundtrack played one after the other with linking interludes.” And though the themes are heavy, the experience is anything but. Starlit Alchemy is not about bypassing pain, but evolving through it. “It’s forensics for trauma AND beauty and the bittersweetness of the in tandem nature of both. Fear, loss, grief are major throughlines, but it’s the magic of what happens when you immerse yourself fully into the experience that begins the alchemy. The strength forms during the surrender and what you once were is shed.”  As for what it sounds like, Yamagata can only say “Perhaps think of Tom Waits as Willy Wonka and Ricki Lee Jones as Dorothy in a soundscape mentored by Hans Zimmer and Joni Mitchell – from her Both Sides now album.  None of which I’m well versed in by the way, so forgive any pretense.”