On her new album, Tomberlin cultivates a community garden

Sarah Beth Tomberlin, the daughter of a Baptist pastor father and a musical mother, grew up gardening with her parents in the land of tobacco farms. The singer-songwriter, who releases music as Tomberlin, says she didn't really enjoy pulling weeds in the hot sun as a kid; now, she lives in New York where she doesn't have a physical garden – but it's clear the experience stuck with her. Gardening appears as a metaphor for personal growth on her new spectacular sophomore album, i don't know who needs to hear this... Themes of planting roots and relating to the natural world pop up throughout the album, but they're especially apparent on "sunstruck," a standout track that Tomberlin has said is about "the growth that can take place if you choose to tend to your own life's garden." "The work's not always fun," she sings, "but it's better than staring at the weed and the mud."

And she's not cultivating that growth alone. She, and members of ) and collaborated with a crew of notable musicians-turned-friends whose photos are all aptly displayed like squares on . (That communal energy is evident in one of the album's singles, which features Tomberlin and her collaborators making music sitting cross-legged in a circle outside and, later, recording in the studio.) The resulting record is a beautiful patchwork of expansive sounds – meditative synths, rocking electric guitars, waltzing woodwind instruments – across eleven tracks that explore a spectrum of emotions – curiosity, doubt, compassion, happiness, guilt, loneliness, vulnerability and forgiveness.