You're Free to Go

You're Free to Go is the fifth studio album by Anjimile (Anjimile Chithambo), released on March 13, 2026 through 4AD. Recorded in fall 2024 at producer Brad Cook's studio in Durham, North Carolina, the record marks a deliberate shift toward directness and warmth after the structural intricacy of his 2023 album The King. Cook, whose previous credits include Waxahatchee, Bon Iver, Mavis Staples, and Iron & Wine, co-wrote several tracks and brought collaborators including Nathan Stocker (Hippo Campus), Matt McCaughan (Bon Iver), and Sam Beam of Iron & Wine.

The album traces a landscape of profound change: new love, evolving relationships, deep grief, estrangement, and the possibility of renewal. Its title evokes a kind of liberation that is also a reckoning. Several songs address Anjimile's estrangement from his mother, who has not accepted his gender transition. Others explore new romantic connection, the embrace of non-monogamy, and a hard-won spiritual peace rooted not in religion but in nature and the experience of making music.

Anjimile has described making the record as easier than previous projects: "I was just literally in a happier place." Critics responded warmly, with the Boston Globe calling his lyrics "either as fine as a stitch or cutting as a scalpel" and Indie Is Not a Genre awarding the album 4.5 out of 5 stars. The sound unfolds organically across warm acoustic guitars, subtle synth textures, lush strings, and delicate rhythmic layers, with late-1990s and early-2000s alternative pop-rock as a sonic touchstone.