Natalie Bergman is back and just in the nick of time. The velvet voiced songstress who set the world a-smoulder with her gospel drenched debut “Mercy” (Third Man, 2022), fans the flame with her new knock-out super disc “My Home is Not in this World,” and we can only say “burn, baby, burn!”

The title lays it on the table; “My Home is Not in this World” is an album that addresses the sense of exile — aesthetic, political, and emotional — in the contemporary context. This record is an outsider. It’s got hooks, charm, wit, & might even whisper in your ear to tell you things will be alright. But it won’t blend in with the increasingly innocuous & robotic sounds played on the radio. In a world too often caught up in cynicism, apathy, and fearful conformity, “My Home Is Not In this World” is a testimonial to vulnerability, feeling, and soul.

In Bergman’s estimation: “I am in the business of writing about love, because that’s what I have, you know? That’s the gift God gave me; my ability to love and to write about it.”

This makes sense; the first time you hear Natalie Bergman, it’s “love at first listen.” Whether it’s on the radio, up onstage or from the grooves of a plastic disc, you hear the voice and you’re hooked. It’s raspy, sweet, a little wistful, and a whole lot soulful. The Midwest strikes again.

“I’m from Chicago, so there was a lot of Chicago soul that my parents listened to, gospel and Motown; and all of the surrounding cities were making this beautiful, soulful music. So that has been a big inspiration in my life.”

Building on this classic foundation, Bergman’s songs are stories; confident expressions of love and lust and pain and loss. She was raised in the woods, she says, listening to all kinds of songbirds, salamanders, frogs, and finches. Maybe the “Natalie Bergman Sound” is one part gospel, two parts classic soul, a half-cup of country, plus a healthy dash of the tree-top calls of woodland fauna, half remembered from a formative paradise. Whatever it is, these otherworldly strains of soul and gospel tinged disco-rock ’n’ roll melodrama are just what the doctor ordered; a one way ticket downstream from the digital maelstrom that makes up the modern condition.

Natalie Bergman lives in Los Angeles but her music is universal; it lives in the hearts and minds and souls of her fellow travelers; born again believers in love, joy, and music’s role as guiding light and lightning rod. Her new record is a transmission, a clarion call to all those disaffected by the digital morass; looking for their kin. Blues, gospel, folk, soul, country, rock ’n’ roll – the best byproducts of the USA –compressed into bite sized salves to heal the angst and loneliness that haunt the modern psyche; smooth as silk electro-shock to chase off alienation.

Natalie Bergman – with brother Elliot as producer – recorded “My Home ..” with the Dap-Tone rhythm section on an Ampex magnetic tape machine and then taped the tape onto more tape in a perverse gesture of analog absolutism; an extravagant act of defiance against the digital monolith.

“You could call it a punk act or, you know, you could call it rebellious. But I don’t really do it for anyone else other than myself. I don’t really know if people could discern or decipher between, you know, me putting two shitty tape machines on top of myself versus the clean. Most people would prefer a cleaner version, that had a little bit more fidelity.”

Bergman’s first record “Mercy” was a paean to her parents who she lost suddenly, tragically, in a car accident. “My Home is not in this World,” on the other hand, was inspired by new love and new life; the bond with her soul partner and birth of her baby. “My last record was so straightforward and conceptual; it was an introspective body of work. This one stemmed from a place of new life. I was in a new relationship. I had a new child.”

“The first album was very much about death. And this one was really birthed from new life, which was what inspired and prompted me to start writing again. I went through a few years of deep grief and wasn’t able to write music until I had Arthur.”

With roots in the mythic Ann Arbor noise-jazz underground, she knows well the way of the ne’er do well. But she’s also unafraid to write some timeless tunes like those whose writing she admires most; the Jonis, Arethas, Caroles, Mavis’, & Bobbys of her canon.

“That’s how I learned music; my mom would play Joni Mitchell on the guitar. And I love her writing because she’s so vulnerable. “She put every little thought that entered her brain onto the paper, and she let us read it. And she let us listen to it. And it’s so cool because you get to have a glimpse into her life here in California. She was such a lover and such a daring woman.”

The record release date is June 13th. It’s a record that will be born under the sign of Gemini and it, as its sign has ordained, shall have a dual nature. It was recorded half in the woods near Chicago with Natalie’s brother Elliott producing, amongst the finches and fauna of their childhood, with the other half recorded in Los Angeles and NYC with trusted session players. The Gemini is on the eternal search for their twin and, while “Mercy” was an ode to faith and a song of love for the departed, “My Home Is Not In this World” is a call to comrades; a missive to help locate one’s “other”; the lovers, seekers, and believers who are on the hunt for something that makes some sense in this topsy turvy time of despair.

“I wouldn’t call this album political, but I do think that the album title, My Home Is Not In this World speaks to the larger picture here on Earth. It also nods to the gospel music that we all grew up listening to. It’s talking about your home over yonder. Yes. It could be that, or this album has a lot of songs that are kind of trying to grapple with that idea of “where do I belong?”

Is there a larger message or theme?

“We need to make our art, and we need to sing and write and, and create, because that’s what keeps us alive, of course.

“I think a lot of our favorite artists were broadcasting the times. Bob Dylan and Bob Marley, two of my favorite musicians in the world, they were responsible for telling the news, and in both cases, with Dylan and Marley, they were doing what gospel did, telling the good news … and telling the bad news, of course. I think that’s part of our responsibility as artists; to speak truth about the way things are currently in the world.

The new Natalie Bergman record “My Home is Not in this World” is a record of love you’re gonna love back.