A year after his breakthrough LP Critterland, the folk singer returns with the song “Work Is Work” and a forthcoming self-produced LP
Willi Carlisle is back with a new album. This summer, the folk singer and songwriter will release Winged Victory, his fourth studio album and his first since last year’s standout collection Critterland.
“A good folk music response to the troubles of the First World is saying ‘what are the little things that we can do,” Carlisle said of his forthcoming album. “Where can we move the needle?”
The first taste of the album, “Work Is Work” is a banjo-heavy, bluegrass-inflected three-verse tune that finds Carlisle reflecting on labor as the narrator traverses a landscape of addiction, casinos, and vacation towns. “Work is work,” he sings in the chorus, “or it wouldn’t pay.”
“I want people to know that they aren’t free from the terrible things that work does to people, from the awful transmutation of labor into money,” Carlisle says of the song, which he wrote in a motel room along the Mississippi River. “But that their sacrifice isn’t meaningless.”
Carlisle’s Winged Victory is a mix of originals and covers, including a rendition of Richard Thompson’s 1994 classic “Beeswing,” as well as a reimagining of Lavender Country’s pioneering 1973 queer country anthem “Cryin’ These Cocksucking Tears,” complete with a new verse.
“As a folk singer and songwriter, I want to foster connection and emotion, to massage the blocked-up parts of the spirit,” Carlisle told Rolling Stone in 2023. “It’s not just that we’re addicted to the slot machines of media, marketing and commentary, it’s that we’re losing our togetherness, our third-spaces, our churches, our families, our wildness.”
Winged Victory is the first record Carlisle has ever self-produced. It will be released June 27, after which Carlisle will embark on an extensive tour.
