Candi Carpenter ‘Reincarnation’ – out now!
There is a remarkable sense of freedom running through Candi Carpenter’s Reincarnation. The EP is rooted in a difficult history, but it never feels imprisoned by that history. Carpenter takes their experience growing up evangelical, their journey through gospel and country music, and their evolution as a queer multidisciplinary artist and turns all of it into an explosive statement of self-definition.
The project’s title provides the perfect framework. Carpenter describes reincarnation not as a supernatural event but as the everyday process of becoming someone new. That idea gives the six songs a strong emotional thread. Each track explores another aspect of identity, from fear and mortality to sexuality, religion, capitalism, and rebellion. Instead of presenting transformation as something neat and simple, Carpenter embraces its messiness.
There is a particularly powerful tension between vulnerability and confrontation throughout the EP. Songs like “Biblically Accurate Angel” reclaim subjects that were once associated with shame, while “American God” takes aim at systems that demand obedience. Yet Carpenter’s rebellion is not empty provocation. Beneath it is a desire for connection, community, love, and the freedom to exist without fear.
The accompanying film makes the entire project feel even more distinctive. Its garbage-filled, zombie-infested setting could have been purely outrageous, but the imagery reflects the EP’s deeper concerns with waste, decay, destruction, and rebirth. Carpenter’s “filthy rainbow” becomes an effective visual metaphor for finding color and beauty in the wreckage. The involvement of Jane Wiedlin also reinforces the project’s outsider spirit.
By the end, Reincarnation feels less like a breakup with the past and more like a reclamation of the future. Carpenter has taken the things they were taught to fear and transformed them into subjects worthy of celebration and exploration. Their statement, “I am my own church,” becomes the perfect conclusion to an EP about rebuilding the self. It is provocative, personal, theatrical, and above all, alive.
