Brandi Carlile brings the emotion

• What: Brandi Carlile, in concert.

• When: 9:30 p.m. Dec. 31.

• Where: Aladdin Theater, 3017 S.E. Milwaukie Ave., Portland.

• Cost: $100. Sold out as of Tuesday; check with Ticketmaster, 800-745-3000 or http://ticketmaster.com, to see if more tickets are released.

• Information: 503-234-9694 or http://aladdin-theater.com.

Brandi Carlile says she improved as a singer on her 2009 CD, “Give Up The Ghost,” by tapping into deeper emotions than on previous studio recordings.

Finding the right emotion on stage has never been a problem for the Seattle singer-songwriter who came onto the scene with her 2005 self-titled CD and gained considerable notice with her 2007 follow-up album, “The Story.”

“The difference between being live and being in the studio is that it’s really easy to deliver a gut-wrenching, moving performance in front of a thousand people that are hurtling their energy at you onto the stage,” Carlile said in a recent phone interview. “It’s really easy to thrive on that.”

She had to work hard to bring that energy to “Give Up The Ghost.”

“If I had to do a vocal for a song that was particularly introspective and sad … well, I would do things like wake myself up at like 6 o’clock in the morning when I was all tired and hadn’t had my coffee, and I’m all bummed out and grumpy, and sing a song like ‘I Will,’ because I wanted it to sound crackly, pained and tired,” Carlile said.

Strikingly honest

For “Give Up The Ghost,” Carlile said, she wanted to examine her inner self on some songs and conjure up deep emotions in lyrical fictional stories on others. Her aim was to be more relatable and more dramatic than on her first two CDs.

The music and lyrics on “Give Up The Ghost” show that Carlile is well on her way to achieving greatness as a songwriter. The album feels strikingly honest, as Carlile’s songs — about relationships, self-image and friendship, to name a few themes — are full of sadness, joy, vulnerability and hope.

The music covers plenty of ground as well. Carlile’s songs range from intimate and highly tuneful acoustic ballads such as “Before It Breaks,” “I Will” and “Dying Day” to a pair of spirited rockers: “Dreams,” which just might have been the catchiest pop song of 2009, and “Caroline,” a sprightly tune with a ragtimey piano line played by one of Carlile’s musical heroes, Elton John.

Recorded differently

Carlile’s approach to “Give Up The Ghost” was starkly different from the way she had approached “The Story.”

“‘The Story’ was set up like a stage, literally a stage in the studio,” Carlile said. “We recorded the record like it was a show, like several shows. We basically played the same guitars and played through the same amplifiers. It has a cohesiveness that’s really unique and cool, that most records don’t have nowadays. And it’s live and hardly overdubbed at all, with one drummer and one band.

“On this record, instead of treating the record like a show, or like an hourlong cohesive project, we wanted to individually treat each song like its own record,” she said. “So each song from beginning to end was its own set-up. We’d get in, and we’d set up for a song, the drums might go at one end of the room today, and you might play through this amp and you might play this guitar, and I might sing into this microphone, and we might use this drummer. Then the next day, it’s a completely different room, completely different set-up, completely different drummer.”

In a live setting, Carlile is pulling out all the stops to showcase her songs. She recently expanded her band to include not only her long-time band mates, guitarist Tim Hanseroth and bassist Phil Hanseroth, but a cellist, a drummer and — on some songs — a keyboardist. She is playing most of the “Give Up The Ghost” songs each night of her tour, as well as several songs from “The Story,” a couple from her self-titled first album and a few covers.

“We try to make our show more and more of an event, orchestrating the show in all different ways. We came up with our own set design for this ‘Give Up The Ghost’ tour,” Carlile said. “It’s just a really exciting show. We are entertainers, and we believe in putting on a show, and we believe that’s what keeps us on the road.”