Jessie Baylin with Dylan LeBlanc

Some singers can create a mood far before the first syllables of lyric have been woven into a full story; a tone, mixed to dissolve perfectly into music, can say it all. Such is the case with Jessie Baylin, whose ethereal voice shoots the opening notes of Dark Place, her fourth album, into instant emotive territory – it envelops in a mysterious gauze, setting the stage for what is her most raw, personal work yet and also her most thrilling.

Baylin’s always been adept at capturing the fragile, complex state of human relationships with a hand that understands the middle ground – things aren’t always what they seem, and she isn’t afraid to play in that treacherous territory. She often weaves a forlorn lyric with an optimistic vocal lick, or a cheerier song with a foreboding crunch of guitar, looming like a distant thunderstorm; it sometimes makes it difficult to tell if a track is innately happy or sad, but that’s the point. Dark Place is the epitome of this dichotomy. After giving birth to her first child, she was as aware of both the light and the dark that comes with parenthood, the restless emotion that comes from a deep, nearly panicked love. And she was especially aware that a shifting tide doesn’t completely sweep away the past, either.

Once again pairing with Richard Swift as producer and writing partner, Baylin recorded Dark Place at Swift’s National Freedom studio in Cottage Grove, OR over a slew of stirringly prolific days—a characteristic that has come to define the duo’s collaborative process. Earlier in Nashville, in one burst, they wrote five of the songs in only four hours.