Chris Thile’s Laysongs is his first truly solo album: It’s just Thile, his voice, and his mandolin, on a set of nine new tracks, combining original songs with three wisely chosen covers that contextualize and banter with his ideas. While Thile’s critically lauded interpretations of Bach on mandolin (2013’s Bach: Sonatas and Partitas, Vol. 1) also showcased him on his own, that was a kind of duet, a dialogue between Thile and his beloved J.S. Bach. Laysongs, on the other hand, is more of a soliloquy, and it’s very much a soul-searching one. Thile confronts, cajoles, and cozies up to his personal — and our shared — angels and demons, an effort made more poignant, dramatic, and universal by the enforced isolation of the pandemic.

At the heart of the album is a three-part piece, “Salt (in the Wounds) of the Earth,” that Thile premiered during a fall 2018 composer’s residency at Carnegie Hall. It was, he’s noted, “the first (and so far only) music I’ve made specifically to perform alone, which felt like an opportunity to sing some words that it wouldn’t necessarily be fair to put in a collaborator’s mouth.” Little did Thile know he was merely at the start of what would become a solitary adventure, professionally and, lord knows, philosophically.