The first album from Tift Merritt in nearly a decade, Sugar reveals an artist whose sense of purpose has ripened into something deeper and more luminous during her time out of the spotlight. Since the release of her landmark 2002 debut Bramble Rose and its 2005 follow-up Tambourine (a Grammy nominee for Best Country Album), the North Carolina-bred singer/songwriter has continued writing songs rooted in her radiant form of country-soul, but she also moved forward with the larger scale work of being a mother,  a Practitioner-in-Residence at Duke University, a placemaker in the collaborative reinvention ofThe Gables in Raleigh, NC, a much needed advocate for musician rights in the digital era with the Artists Right Alliance, and a plain old human being dedicated to her own instincts.  These endeavors have unlocked new dimensions of her lifelong devotion to the transformative potential of storytelling. The latest installment in a widely celebrated body of work, Sugar arrives as a defining statement from one of Americana’s most seminal artists: a selection of gorgeously unguarded songs that light the way toward a sustaining sweetness in dispiriting times.

“Before I made this record I was looking at the world and thinking, ‘I don’t know what to do except try to put some love out there.’ And for me, singing is the most honest, immediate way to offer love,” says Merritt. “My work has always been about trying to understand what it means to be human at that point in time; I believe it’s my responsibility as an artist to have a creative response to the current moment. But that response has to make room for the personal and the joyful too—we can’t face everything with doom and gloom alone.”

Produced by Lawrence Rothman (Amanda Shires, Margo Price, Bartees Strange), Sugar finds Merritt joining forces with an eclectic lineup of musicians she refers to as “a mix of old friends and new friends,” including guitarist Audley Freed (Alison Krauss, Sheryl Crow), multi-instrumentalist Robert Ellis (PJ Harvey, Faye Webster) Dr. Dog drummer Eric Slick and Midlake drummer McKenzie Smith, and veteran session players like Art Edmaiston (a Memphis-based arranger/saxophonist who’s worked with Levon Helm, the Allman Brothers Band, and many more). Recorded at Nashville’s Gold Pacific Studios and tracked live with a deliberate spontaneity, the album possesses an elemental power born from the pure urgency of Merritt’s vocal work. “It was really intense making this record, because eight years of my life were pouring out,” she says. “But when you’re surrounded by people who you know are protecting you, you can sing like your heart’s coming out of your chest, without holding anything back. And to me that’s always joyous.”

Merritt’s first album since 2017’s Stitch of the World, Sugar takes its title from a piano-led and fiercely tender track that voices her profound unease about returning to the stage. “The music business can be an uphill battle, especially for women, and after I stepped away, I lost any desire to fight against an industry that didn’t really see what I had to give,” says Merritt, who stopped touring just before her daughter turned two. “‘Sugar’ came from my own reluctance to return to singing, wondering if that world was going to hurt me again, but it’s also a recognition that no one can take my voice away from me.” One of the last songs penned for the album, “Sugar” ultimately calls attention to the unsung and overlooked work that makes life whole—a graceful foregrounding that forms the heartbeat of the LP. “To me sugar is the real, low-down sweetness of life,” says Merritt. “It’s doing the hard stuff and finding what you’re made of; it lives in the in-between spaces away from the stage. It’s a sweetness that’s not easily won, but that’s exactly why it matters.”

In a shining introduction to its resplendent yet unvarnished sound, Sugar opens on “Finest Feelings”—a raw and ravishing track that also encapsulates the album’s radically open-hearted spirit (from the chorus: “Show me your finest feelings, what they’re all about / I got nothing urgent but your mouth”). “Sometimes in life you come across people who shake you up and remind you how much you have inside you,” says Merritt. “It’s such a gift,  I had to mark it, revisit it with singing.” Later, Sugar moves into the groove-heavy and horn-backed exaltation of “Look What Love Just Did,” a fearlessly sincere homage to the magic in the margins of everyday life. “I wrote that song thinking about how there’s so much chaos in the world—but then out of nowhere there are those small moments where everything turns, everything’s right where it belongs,” she says. “Especially right now, it feels important to collect those moments and keep them close.”

Although Sugar often explores the most granular and intimate details of her lived experience, a number of songs look to the wider world and draw from Merritt’s academic research which centers archival research and obscured fragments of the past. To that end, the mournful “Mad Mad World” examines her hometown’s decision to transform a former psychiatric hospital into a central park, while “Fate of Man Is Sarah’s Eyes” repurposes text from that hospital’s 1919 sewing-room report into a harmony-rich, a cappella ode to essential workers. On the choir-accompanied and string-adorned “Everyday Singing,” Merritt delicately threads past and present, honoring the resilience of women who continue to create and care amid massive upheaval. “That song’s based on a series of letters between [New York City-based record label owner] Rosetta Rietz and [London-based anarchist poet] Dachine Rainer,” she explains. “Their correspondence begins in the ’60s and goes into the ’80s, and there was something so comforting about seeing how they’d supported each other through everything from being single moms to fighting for what they believed in at these different moments in history.” Meanwhile, on the heavy-hearted but sharp-witted “Last Ditch Ultimatum,” Merritt spins a satirical tale of Jesus shutting down heaven in a fit of justifiable frustration (“With the drag queens and orphans and sweet Mary Magdalene / Pack it up and go to Paris, that’s what I’d do if I were him”).

Even in its most painful moments (such as “Generous,” a quietly shattering breakup song that captures the sorrow of feeling disposable), Sugar hums with the effusive energy of its creation. Not only a source of personal catharsis for Merritt, her fully embodied performance serves as a heartfelt invitation for others to join her in shedding all emotional armor. “When people hear this album, I hope they feel like I shared with them as generously as I could—I hope they feel the joy and laughter and asking of hard questions that went into writing these songs,” she says. “This record showed me that I believe as deeply as ever in speaking with complete openness and vulnerability about what it means to be a messy human being in this world. These days when feels like it’s getting harder and harder to connect with something real, I’m doubling down on that realness.”