Candi Carpenter has spent a lot of time becoming different versions of themself. Gospel prodigy. Country artist. Grand Ole Opry performer. Songwriter. Producer. Now, as a queer, autistic multidisciplinary artist, Carpenter is stepping into another chapter with Reincarnation, a six-track alt-rock EP that turns questions of identity, sexuality, religion, mortality and healing into something loud, strange and deeply personal.
Due in September, Reincarnation is more than a collection of songs. It is a musical and visual world built around Carpenter’s attempt to understand what remains when you start pulling apart the beliefs and expectations you were raised with.
Carpenter grew up in a Christian Missionary Alliance pastor’s family, performing gospel music across the Midwest with their family band. After leaving high school and moving to Nashville, they took a very different path, eventually touring with Grand Ole Opry legends, earning a Billboard country single and making their own Grand Ole Opry debut.
That history has not disappeared. Instead, Carpenter is turning it inside out.
Their previous project, 2024’s Demonology, established Carpenter’s move into alt-pop and developed a strong following around its unconventional approach. Reincarnation pushes that experimentation further, bringing together music, filmmaking, acting and world-building in a project that is deliberately difficult to put inside one box.
The idea behind the EP comes from Carpenter’s changing sense of identity. “Every day, about one percent of your body dies,” they explain, connecting that physical process to the idea that people are constantly becoming someone new.
For Carpenter, that idea also carries a deeper meaning. Growing up evangelical meant being taught to fear parts of themself that they now consider central to their creativity and identity. Reincarnation becomes a way of asking what life might have looked like without those fears, and what it means to build yourself again after leaving them behind.
The songs move through very different emotional and musical spaces. The title track considers the constantly shifting nature of identity, while “Little Freak” takes aim at capitalism and the disposable way people and things can be treated. “The Fear of Being Human Remains” turns inward, confronting the strange terror of consciousness and simply existing inside a human body.
“Inside the Simulation” questions the nature of reality through Carpenter’s experience with evangelical beliefs and the fear of eternal punishment. “Biblically Accurate Angel” explores sexuality, shame and the complicated process of separating personal beauty from the things religion once taught them to fear.
The closing track, “American God,” is perhaps the clearest statement of independence. Rather than accepting systems that demand obedience, Carpenter turns toward self-determination and the declaration, “I am my own church.”
But Reincarnation does not stop with the music. Carpenter has created a short film in which every song has its own visual chapter. Made on an indie budget, the project involved Carpenter and friends building a garbage dump inside a warehouse and filming for a week. Set in a strange, zombie-filled world, the film embraces deliberately obvious symbolism and a visual style Carpenter describes as a “filthy rainbow.”
The project also features Jane Wiedlin of The Go-Go’s, who appears in the film and has praised Carpenter’s creativity and songwriting.
For Carpenter, however, the ambition behind Reincarnation is not simply about making something unusual. It is about healing.
The project gave them an opportunity to challenge themselves as a musician while growing as a director, actor and world-builder. More importantly, it became a way to confront parts of themselves that had remained hurt beneath the surface.
Now, Carpenter is taking that new chapter on the road with a cross-country co-headlining tour alongside Moselle, beginning with an EP release show in Nashville on September 12.
The live experience promises to carry the same spirit as the record, with a deconstructed church atmosphere and a cinematic presentation designed to create a space where people can feel understood rather than judged.
Carpenter has already lived several musical lives. With Reincarnation, they are not trying to return to any of them.
They are choosing what comes next.
Find Candi Carpenter:
Website, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Threads, Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, SoundCloud, Pandora, TIDAL
