There’s an unmistakable urgency you can feel when a song is written and performed from a place of complete honesty. That feeling permeates singer-songwriter Juliet Lloyd’s new album, Carnival.

“I’ve always been envious of writers who say they write songs because they have to, because they had these things they just had to get out of themselves,” Juliet says. “I had never really felt that way until this album. I’ve become someone who writes because they have to.”

The album is Juliet’s first full-length effort since 2007. Shortly after releasing her sophomore album that year, she walked away from music completely for more than 10 years, feeling burned out and unhappy with her career progression like so many other independent artists. After going through a divorce in 2019 and in the midst of a global pandemic, she found herself pulled back toward the siren call of songwriting and again making the leap to pursue it full time. Carnival is in many ways the culmination of those decisions, and the reintroduction of an artist who now has the wisdom of experience.

“These songs have helped me make sense of emotions and experiences that have happened both recently and those that I’ve buried for 20+ years, to confront truths about myself and about others that I’ve been afraid or unwilling to say out loud,” Juliet says. “I’ve never been a confrontational person. But this is definitely a confrontational album. And I love it.”

Recorded in an unhurried process over nearly 15 months and produced by Todd Wright (Lucy Woodward, Butch Walker, Toby Lightman), Carnival’s nine songs are a study in contrasts. Light and dark, devastating and self-deprecating, apologetic and angry, conversational and conceptual. They are genre-fluid, weaving elements of pop, folk, soul, and rock to create a vibrant and often unexpected platform for Juliet’s unflinching storytelling.

“When you give all your grace away to those who don’t deserve it, there’s no saving grace for yourself,” Lloyd sings on the album’s leadoff single, “Pretty.” It’s a line that takes aim in equal parts at both narrator and subject, a common device throughout Carnival’s lyrics.

The central theme of Carnival and that of its title track is not being too precious about any one experience or decision. Take them for what they are, live in the moment, and move on when they’re done. It acknowledges also that memory can be subjective, and ambiguous—was an experience ultimately a good thing or a bad thing? And whose memory can you rely on to determine the answer to that question?

These questions are on full display in one of the album’s standout tracks, “Sorry Now,” a raw and immediate interrogation of divorce. “Why does it feel like the choices of who gets the knife set, the mattress, the old picture frames are harder than choosing to leave in the first place?” Juliet sings over a sparse keyboard accompaniment before the track kicks in with a lush, R&B-inflected production.

Jim Myers also joins us this day.