Nearly a year to the day after her New York apartment—containing instruments, keepsakes, and years of lyrics—burned to the ground, indie singer/songwriter Laura Gibson returns with her fourth album. Rustic but poised, delicate but quietly resilient, Empire Builder is like Feist on a lonely road trip through a night that never seems to end. Paradoxically, the softer Gibson’s grip is, the tighter her hold, whether it’s the hushed heartbeat of “Empire Builder” (“We are not alone and we are more alone than we’ve ever been”) or the elusive, bewitching “The Search for Dark Lake.”