“Going deep, bravely into the pain” is how activist-artist Madame Gandhi describes Vibrations, her third studio album — and could easily double as a subtitle for it. For several years prior to the pandemic, the overachieving artist and public speaker had spent her life traveling on and off. (Here’s a sampling: Touring Oprah and MIA alike; leading a Ted Talk; writing a song for Hillary Clinton’s streaming series, Gutsy.) “While that time was beautiful, it distracted me from deeper emotional work that I didn’t know I had to do. Sometimes when we’re in that pain,” Gandhi says, “we forget that getting past it is possible. After all, pain are the pulsations that remind us we’re alive.
Vibrations (Sony Masterworks, 2022) is just as effervescently escapist as its name implies. Because when the vocalist-percussionist (real name: Kiran Gandhi) came out of isolation, she was a different person: uplifted, vivacious, content. A rush of joy and introspection, Vibrations manages to be everything at once: a psychic rebirth, a life’s plan, a celebration of existence. But mostly, Vibrations is the sound of Gandhi, transcendent storyteller that she is, bringing us together through her own vantage point. Even the album’s first lyric is the invitation, “Come with me.”

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