When Anjimile Chithambo was growing up in suburban Dallas, his parents dragged him to church regularly. For a Black kid struggling with questions about his sexuality and gender identity, a conservative Presbyterian church in North Texas did not exactly feel like home, and by the time he was a teenager, he considered himself an atheist.
When the singer-songwriter, who performs under his first name, arrived at a crowded coffee shop in Durham, N.C., on a cold, drizzly February day, he wore a blue baseball hat bearing the words “Greatest Grandpa.” Underneath, it was hard to miss the gold cross earring dangling from his right ear.
“I just bought this because it looks gay,” he said with a sharp laugh during a wide-ranging interview that finished several hours later in his producer’s home studio. “I was going for George Michael. This is a gay cross.”
Anjimile, 32, has been on something of a spiritual journey since his days as a teenage atheist. He came out twice — first as a lesbian during high school, and again years later as trans — and endured a long, hard slog through hospitals, rehab and a halfway house on the way to sobriety. These days, he hasn’t come back to the God he was told about as a child, but has learned to trust in something greater than himself.
“I don’t know about a bearded individual on high,” Anjimile said, “but I believe in the beauty of nature, in love, in a source of universal basic good, and in the otherworldly experience of making and sharing music.”
All that undergirds his new album, “You’re Free to Go,” due March 13. Anjimile started writing songs as a teenager as he was getting ready to leave Texas to attend Northeastern University in Boston. The alternately fragile and abrasive folk-pop that came pouring out of him has often chronicled the emotional fallout of his life’s tumult, reaching a transfixing crescendo in 2023 on “The King,” an album written and recorded in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. Harrowing songs about Anjimile’s battered self-image and his painful estrangement from his mother, whom he described as “homophobic and transphobic,” were buffeted by production that leaned hard into the heaviness.
Alynda Segarra, who performs as Hurray for the Riff Raff, invited Anjimile to open for them in 2022, and said he left audiences “mesmerized.” “Everywhere we went, the rooms would be silent,” Segarra said. “The vibe I got from touring with him was this is somebody who’s experienced a lot of pain, who’s really grateful to be alive. When you’re dealing with things like addiction, only you can make that journey to your art and say, ‘This is going to be my life raft.’”
The subject matter hasn’t changed entirely for “You’re Free to Go,” but Anjimile’s outlook has.
“I was just literally in a happier place,” he said, referring to his move to Durham. “I knew the next project needed to feel easier. Brad lives down the street from my house. That’s easy.”
The producer Brad Cook, a tall, gregarious, bearded Wisconsinite who relocated to Durham two decades ago, has produced music by Bon Iver, Waxahatchee and Iron & Wine. The first time he and Anjimile met at Cook’s studio, which is built into two rooms in his home on a quiet, wooded street, they wrote and recorded “Ready or Not,” a hushed, meditative ballad that is in many ways the new album’s emotional centerpiece.
“It was one of the most fluid, seamless songwriting experiences I’ve ever had with another person in my entire life,” Anjimile said.
Cook clicked pretty instantly with Jimi, as his friends call him, and hoped to make a record that reflected the person he was getting to know. He called the songs “some of the bravest, most uncompromising writing” he’s ever heard. “Jimi’s able to articulate that experience of being a Black trans man in America right now and what comes along with it with spiritual calm and clarity,” Cook said. The challenge was to showcase other parts of his personality, too.
In conversation, Anjimile often punctuated quiet, somber reflections with a tension-piercing quip, and spoke thoughtfully about bouts of suicidal ideation, teenage skateboarding and his youthful fascination with Powerline, the Prince-like rock star character in the 1995 Disney film “A Goofy Movie.”
“Jimi’s got a lightness to him,” Cook added. “He’s funny as hell. We laugh a lot.”
Rebirth and transformation are recurring themes throughout the record, which opens with an airy, Elliott Smith-style fingerpicked guitar melody and Anjimile singing, “There is something like a new being growing on me” on the title track. “Rust & Wire” and “The Store” are tender, almost breezy love songs, and “Like You Really Mean It,” with its warm synths and insistent beat, is pure, unadulterated pop.
“I was listening to a lot of late-90s, early 00s alternative pop-rock when I was writing this album,” Anjimile said. “Let me see if I can find my little old playlist.” He pulled out his phone and then paused for a moment, shaking his head and smiling. “Am I going to say this out loud?”
With a little coaxing, he ran through an unexpected list of songs of songs that included Third Eye Blind’s “Never Let You Go,” Alien Ant Farm’s “Movies” and Hoobastank’s “Running Away.” “I can explain. I just really love the melodies in these songs,” Anjimile said. “There was also ‘Barely Breathing’ by Duncan Sheik. I listened to it a lot in the year after becoming estranged from my mother. It felt very poignant and meaningful.”
The older music provided a portal back to an earlier time.
“When those songs were coming out, I was maybe 8, 9,” he explained. “I remember listening in the car. Those melodies have stayed with me.”
Cook recruited Sam Beam of Iron & Wine to record backing vocals on three tracks. Beam had never previously heard Anjimile’s music but was immediately impressed. “It’s just so intricate, beautiful and vulnerable,” he said.
“You’re Free to Go” is either Anjimile’s third or sixth album, depending on who’s counting. He recorded and released three albums between 2015 and 2018 that he has since pulled off streaming services. He considers “Giver Taker,” which came out in 2020, his “debut,” in part because it was the first time he’d recorded in a studio with a budget, but also because it marked the start of a new chapter.
“I don’t want to disavow my early work,” he said. “But the experience of hitting rock-bottom in alcoholism then getting sober, this life-changing experience, it matured me as a human and a songwriter.” “Giver Taker” was also the first album he made after starting to take testosterone as part of his transition.
“Testosterone changed my voice entirely, and my musical personality in a way,” he said. “My voice went down an octave. So, it was like, ‘This is a debut of what I sound like now.’”
That “You’re Free to Go” is often joyful, funny and even sensuous is not evidence that Anjimile’s past traumas have completely receded or that he’s reached some sort of finish line.
“It just means I’m working toward acceptance and self-love,” he said. “Living takes work. Sometimes, it’s really hard but I feel like I have a base line now of ‘I’m going to be OK.’”
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