Brandi Carlile growing steadily as artist over course of three albums

Her music's reflective sounding, even though she's not prone to much reflection.

At least when it comes to her livelihood.

But that's changed for Brandi Carlile of late.

In a little more than a month, the singer-songwriter will turn 30, and as she approaches that symbolically significant age, she's been giving thought to a career that has long seemed like a given to her, a second nature, requiring no more cognition than breathing.

She's come to the understand that she's doing exactly what she should be doing.

"You really realize that when you're getting ready to turn 30," Carlile says. "All your friends who are getting ready to turn 30 are going, 'What am I going to do?' And you're looking back going, 'Wow, what have I just done?' "

Carlile's been performing in front of crowds since she was a little kid, hamming it up in talent shows that her parents entered her in back in her native Washington state.

From there, she began busking as a teenager, performing in Elvis tribute acts and honing her own brand of earthy, yet often bombastic tunes, where her powerful, economy-sized voice frequently escalates from a murmur to an impassioned clarion call against a shifting backdrop of cello, piano and guitar swing.

"I left home a long, long time ago, in a tin can for the road with a suitcase and some songs," she sings on "Dying Day," from her 2009 disc "Give up the Ghost." "Chasing miles through the nighttime making tracks, with no time for looking back to the place where I belong."

No time, until now.

"When I look back at playing in bars and finding my way through restaurants, trying to learn how to run my own PA system, it's like, I see that now as something that I probably couldn't do," Carlile says. "But back then, I always thought I was living the dream, on the cusp of making it big."

Carlile hasn't yet hit it big, commercially speaking, though she's developed into a solid live draw and grown considerably as an artist over the course of her three albums, evolving into the more studious musician that you hear on the fastidiously arranged and produced "Ghost."

Carlile's latest disc, "Live at Benaroya Hall with the Seattle Symphony," released this week, sees her performing her tunes with a full orchestra, fleshing out her material with sweeping symphonic flourishes.

"My songwriting is so influenced by orchestrated music, dramatic, super glam rock-y stuff," Carlile says. "Two of my biggest influences in songwriting were Elton John and Freddie Mercury. When you think about Elton John and Queen, you don't think strings right off the bat, but you listen to those albums and they're heavily orchestrated.

"Those strings, when I'm writing songs, they're there, whether you hear them or not, they're there in my mind and I'm singing to them," she continues. "So all you're really hearing when you're hearing the orchestra actually in the music is what my vision was from the beginning. To me, it feels like the realization of the songs, finally."

Carlile and her band already have another new studio album in the can, due out later in the year. Carlile says that the album was inspired by a steady diet of Led Zeppelin, The Who and Rolling Stone records, resulting in a more fiery rock disc.

"We really just wanted to capture as much energy as we possibly could in all performances and do everything in a way that wasn't laborious," she notes. "We wanted to make energy our ultimate goal."

That energy is palpable at Carlile's live gigs, which can be more raucous than her records might suggest.

Carlile's grown up on the road, her outlook on life transitioning right along with the scenery flying by outside the tour bus windows.

"It defines the way that you walk through the world, especially when you're talking about intermingling with different kinds of people culturally," Carlile says of her travels. "All those kinds of people, they're not generalized, but they're just so colorful and bright, and to be able to learn how to intermingle with different kinds of people, it shapes the way that you come home and interact with your own family. It's really a special experience. I wish everybody could have it at some point in life."

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.