Bruce Hornsby Announces New LP ‘Non-Secure Connection’ Shares First Single “My Resolve” Feat. James Mercer

Award-winning pianist, singer and songwriter Bruce Hornsby’s forthcoming album, Non-Secure Connection, is set for release on August 14 and is now available for preorder. In advance of the release, the album’s lead single, “My Resolve,” which features James Mercer (The Shins, Broken Bells), debuts today. Hornsby calls the song “a Sisyphean tale of the creative life, sung with a fellow climber.” Check it out below..

The new record follows the release of 2019’s acclaimed album, Absolute Zero, which The New York Times praised as “one more daring, rewarding turn in his catalog: 10 knotty, thoughtful yet rambunctious songs that juggle scientific concepts, history and human relationships.”

Hornsby’s music changed when he started having the genesis of his songs be from film music. Through composing for writer and director Spike Lee, Hornsby would often feel that the certain atmospheric quality of a “cue” he’d written should be developed into a song. About this unique approach, Hornsby notes, “It takes my music to a place that I like that sets it apart from other things I’ve done. I’m often looking to make a sound that I haven’t heard before and find a place in what I guess is the context of popular song for some new information.” Hornsby’s continued growth as a musician enables him to build upon and explore new musical techniques. On Non-Secure Connection, he’s created something different that touches on a broad range of themes, from civil rights to computer hackers, mall salesmen and the Darwinian aspects of AAU basketball.

“The new album’s chromaticism and dissonance quotient is exactly twice as high (three songs featuring that language compared to one and a half on the last record),” says Hornsby of Non-Secure Connection. “I feel like my music has never been a part of any trend that defined any era of music during my 34 years of doing this. I may be wrong, but that’s how it feels to me.”

Predominantly produced by Hornsby, the 10-track album includes added production from Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Brad Cook (Sharon Van Etten, Hiss Golden Messenger) Wayne Pooley (Bon Iver, Jack DeJohnette) and Tony Berg (Phoebe Bridgers, Andrew Bird, Aimee Mann), who Hornsby credits as the album’s “aesthetician and ombudsman.” Non-Secure Connection also includes musical contributions from Mercer, Vernon, Jamila Woods, Leon Russell, Vernon Reid, Rob Moose and Hideaki Aomori of yMusic, The Orchestra of St. Hanks (Frost School/Univ. of Miami), Hornsby’s longtime band The Noisemakers and more. The tracks “Non-Secure Connection” and “Porn Hour” were co-written with Chip deMatteo while “Bright Star Cast” was inspired by with James Weldon Johnson’s “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” and “Anything Can Happen” was co-written with Russell, who appears thanks to a demo that he and Hornsby recorded together more than 25 years ago.