A year ago, driving late one night, singer/songwriter Lena Rich watched an emerald city materialize from the delirious haze of long miles on the road. As she sped nearer, the mirage faded into an oil refinery glowing sickly green in the darkness. Yet that liminal moment between imagination and reality lingered in Rich’s mind, and eventually became the guiding concept and title track for her latest album, Emerald City. Written mostly while on a tour that began the day after Rich’s partner and collaborator at the time broke things off, Emerald City (September 4) is a series of stories about finding your footing, composed as Rich was finding hers. Quickly discovering the collaboration had only been holding her back, Rich steeled herself and set out on the road alone, instead of folding. And as she gained solid ground day by day, she surprised herself with a new vulnerability, deeper connection to audiences, and a newfound creativity that flourished.

Produced by Mike Eli LoPinto (Emily Nenni, The Montvales, guitar for Chris Stapleton), Emerald City is a raw, honest, album, with plenty of renegade spirit — an album for anyone willing to fight for what they’re worth — about believing in the joy of life despite the hardships. Part self reflection, part a commentary on the growing fragmentation of the United States (including the destruction both school shootings and greedy billionaires wreak on the world), on the album Rich tackles choosing friendships, beautiful places, shared experiences, and exploring the mysteries of being alive even while the world seems to be burning. 

“Emerald City is a vast spectrum of introspection, optimism, and timely snapshots of a country on the precipice of something new,” Rich says. “But it’s also about me, about my story, and reclaiming my creative path for me and me alone.” 

There’s tension inherent to reclaiming your independence, especially as a woman. Rich unfurls the process beginning with “Black Box,” a tightly-controlled contemplation about locking away emotions, and when and how they’re allowed out. But rid of those restrictive ideas of control, for the album’s second track, Rich delivers “Gas is Cheap,” a feminist outlaw ballad falling somewhere between Thelma & Louise and the Chicks’ “Goodbye Earl”; she sings as a woman on a precipice, for whom reckless actions are the only way to hold control of her future: “You wanna settle down but not in this town / And you’re grieving for what you never found / Throw it to the wind, you’re already wanted.” Still later, that steely way of tossing caution to the wind returns with new purpose in the contemplative “Tupelo,” about getting to the destination, no matter what. 

Comfortable with the macabre and with an eye to undeniable darkness in the world, Rich shoots it straight, articulating the best possible reason to take her shot on “We’re All Gonna Die;” and “Wasting Time,” a patchwork of dream-state existential visions. And the album’s final track, which severs the last connective threads to a broken love, with the inescapable, rhetorical question: “What if all our dreams came true and nothing even changed / What if I knew all the words and had nothing to say?”

Ghastly images and miserable feelings have a way of highlighting the beauty in the world. Bringing the full force of that contrast and of a rough, essential, transition point in her life to bear on this set of songs, Rich drops the curtain, revealing the way sorrow and beauty so often compliment each other and dance together to form a full, independent life. Just as, illuminated by the sickly light of that oil refinery masquerading as an emerald city, she fixated on the ultimate power of choosing to believe in joy above, and in spite of, all else.