A guide to The Returner, Allison Russell's Polaris-shortlisted album

Allison Russell's The Returner is one of 10 albums shortlisted for the 2024 Polaris Music Prize, and CBC Music's Shortlist Shortcut series is back to help music fans learn the key details about this year's nominees.

• Here's the 2024 Polaris Music Prize short list

In this guide to The Returner, you'll learn the story behind the Montreal singer-songwriter's second studio album, discover the tracks you need to know, and even find out how to maximize your enjoyment of the album with the perfect summer activity to complement your listening.

You can also listen to a radio special on The Returner, part of CBC Music's Polaris-themed series, The Ten. Tune in here.

Artist:

Allison Russell. 

Album:

The Returner.

Polaris Music Prize history:

Russell's debut album, Outside Child, was longlisted for the 2021 Polaris Music Prize. She has made her first appearance on the short list with The Returner.

Story behind the album:

While The Returner may seem like an obvious title for a sophomore album, there are layers to its meaning.

In 2022, Brandi Carlile enlisted Russell to play clarinet at Joni Mitchell's now legendary comeback concert at the Newport Folk Festival. It was her first public performance since the ruptured brain aneurysm she suffered in 2015. Inspired by Mitchell's resilience, Russell wrote a poem in which she described Mitchell as "Our Lady Returner." She explained to Variety, "I thought about how much grit and grace that she has as a human being to be able to come back from death, not once, but three times, and to relearn not just how to sing and play, but how to walk and talk."

They're qualities that also apply to Russell herself, whose sexual abuse as a teen formed the thematic through-line of Outside Child. So, The Returner struck her as an apt title for her followup album, and its 10 songs find her rising above that childhood trauma, stronger, hopeful and bolstered by a cohort of friends and fellow musicians.

There's actually another Mitchell connection: The Returner was recorded at the same Los Angeles studio where Mitchell recorded Blue. "I feel so grateful to exist in the time of Joni," Russell explained to CBC's Tom Power. "My mom was listening to Joni the entire time I was gestating, so I've literally been listening to her since before I was born."

In her notes, Russell states, "My goal with The Returner — sonically, poetically, and spiritually — is a radical reclamation of the present tense, a real-time union of body, mind, and soul." She sets about achieving that goal through a deft mix of folk, country, bluegrass, blues, gospel, rock and soul, all in the service of her eloquent, potent lyrics.

Notable players:

Russell assembled an all-female band to join her for The Returner, dubbing them her Rainbow Coalition — essentially a troupe of gifted and like-minded musicians who embodied the album's spirit of hope.

They include guitarist Wendy Melvoin and keyboardist Lisa Coleman, known as Wendy & Lisa, who famously backed Prince before branching out on their own. SistaStrings, the duo of violinist Chauntee Ross and cellist Monique Ross, provided the string arrangements, while Joy Clark plays acoustic guitar on several songs.

Special guests Brandi Carlile, Brandy Clark and Hozier added backing vocals to "Requiem," the album's final song (with the marvellous metaphor, "Hope is a prairie fire.") Production and songwriting duties were shared by Russell herself and Dim Star (the duo of Russell's husband, JT Nero, and his brother, Drew Lindsay).

Standout songs:

'The Returner'

Russell's debut album, Outside Child, won best album at the 2022 Americana Honors and Awards, and of all the songs on The Returner, the title track stays most faithfully in that rootsy lane. Cozy acoustic guitar accompaniment in the verses expands to include strings, percussion, bass, electric guitar and lavish backup vocals in the chorus, which takes off like a rocket as Russell sings:

Goodbye, so long, farewell, all I've been
Ooh, oblivion
Throw me in the ocean
Ooh, see if I can swim.

It's not only an ode to moving on, but also a reminder that when you find yourself ready to take the plunge, you're not alone.

'Stay Right Here'

This churning, burning song has got rock and disco in its DNA with echoes of Bonnie Tyler's "Holding Out for a Hero" and Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive." Figuring out how to survive, scars and all, is the song's preoccupation:

Maybe if it hasn't killed me yet
It'll make me stronger in time
All that my body can never forget
Why do good things make me cry?

'Snakelife'

Darker and sparser than the rest of the songs on The Returner, "Snakelife" recalls Italian composer Ennio Morricone's film music with its loping drumbeat, doleful electric guitar and rattlesnake percussion. That is, until Russell's narrative shifts from the past ("Every wound a rift, a hide, a portal to another time") to a better, brighter future, which ushers in an energy surge:

We burst through our skin
Skins turn to asteroids
Now the bountiful blackness
Weds that pregnant silence
And a song is born

Shedding one's skin to grow into a "new and wet and gleaming one" is the transformation Russell describes in the opening verse, and she concludes the song with a reminder: "Black is beautiful and good."

Recommended if you like:

The Paper Kites, Olivia Dean, Denitia, Rhiannon Giddens.

Summer activity pairing:

Do people still do working bees? Pitching in to build a dock, paint a garage, or pack up an apartment prior to a move? The Returner brims with such collective energy, it begs to be heard in a setting where many hands — one's own version of a Rainbow Coalition — make light work.

Don't miss Shortlist Summer: a season-long showcase of the 10 albums shortlisted for the 2024 Polaris Music Prize. Read the weekly Polaris Shortlist Shortcut feature at cbcmusic.ca/polaris and tune into The Ten radio special every Sunday night at 6 p.m. (6:30 NT) at cbc.ca/listen.