“A friend took me to see Ben De La Cour at a little hole-in-the-wall in Nashville. It didn’t take long to realize I was in the presence of greatness. He has much to say, and knows how to say it as only a true poet can. You owe it to yourself to check him out. He is important. You need this bright young talent now more than ever. We all need Ben de la Cour,” said Lucinda Williams recently about a young artist born in London, raised in Brooklyn, and now residing in the American South.
On his latest album, New Roses (out 6/6), De La Cour strips away any preconceived notions of what an Americana artist should sound like, incorporating Nick Cave’s dark, overtoned mood swings into crashing orchestral flourishes while never shying away from an occasional hearty twang. New Roses follows de la Cour’s 2023 LP, Sweet Anhedonia, and marks a dramatic change of pace, giving themes of loneliness and hope a bluesy and cryptic overtone, mirroring some of rock’s most tortured poets.
New Roses grew out of late-night writing and recording sessions at his home, where he experimented with layering synthesizers and looping sounds, snarling electric guitar and his expert acoustic fingerpicking. “I didn’t even set out to make an album, but I started recording these songs on GarageBand with one microphone and this second-hand synth I bought and then it sort of evolved that way,” de la Cour says, “I just experimented with different approaches to songs and kind of let each song go where it wanted to go.”
New Roses is a singular and personal vision, with de la Cour playing every instrument except fiddle (handled by long-time collaborator Billy Contreras) and trumpet while also delivering his strongest vocal performance yet. The result is a razor-sharp album full of what he calls “night songs”— haunting, impactful songs that feel like the witching hour.
Glide had the good fortune recently to have De La Cour share a track-by-track background/narrative for each of the 11 haunting songs on New Roses- an early contender for album of the year list consideration.
I MUST BE LONELY
A late night drive down abandoned streets, hearing the past calling darkly through the airwaves but fighting against it. It never ends.
THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO SILVERLAKE
This is kind of a reimagining of the apocryphal story of the crossroads. A song about being really careful about what you wish for and how passing yourself off as someone you’re not can lead to horrifying and unforeseen repercussions. Poe once said “The best stories are an arabesque of supernatural menace and wry jesting.” A lot of people talk about knowing the devil, but if you did, you wouldn’t talk about it.
BAD STAR
I wrote this song at a time where it felt like everything was going wrong in my life. I wanted to try to capture the feeling of despair and of being at the mercy of forces far beyond our control. Which we always are, but sometimes it feels much more apparent and tangible. Little did I know how much worse things were going to get.
BEAUTIFUL DAY
I wrote this song after reading William Blake’s “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.” I grew up listening to folk and old country music while also playing in metal bands, and I’ve slowly been striving to merge those influences. It was fun getting to cut loose and play some electric lead guitar on this one. Eddie Van Halen must be turning in his grave.
We Were Young Together Once
I wrote this one for my daughter. It was a tough one to write and took me a long time. Your job as a songwriter is to cut as close to the bone as possible but that doesn’t mean it ever stops being incredibly painful.
JUKEBOX HEART
Jim White described this one as “kind of like an aging stripper dry humping Nick Caves tuxedo clad wax figure at Madam Tussaud’s.” He didn’t mean it as a compliment. I like it though.
CHRISTINA
It’s been a long-time goal of mine to try to write a song that tells a whole story in a minute or less. This is as close as I’ve ever gotten. Emily Scott Robinson sings harmony – we won the Kerrville New Folk competition together and she’s one of my very favorite songwriters out there. Otherworldly voice too.
BILOXI
This was my attempt at writing a Beach Boys, Big Star type of song. I wanted a song where there were no repeating parts and everything just twists and builds into a final crescendo. My ambition was severely handicapped by my inability to understand even the most basic rudiments of music theory, but that just made it more fun – especially when it came to working out the harmonies.
STUART LITTLE KILLED GOD (ON 2ND AVE)
The idea for the song came to me in a dream. I was walking through the streets of Manhattan beneath a gray and black apocalyptic sky. It was hot, and newspapers were blowing all around my feet as I walked into the wind. There were people staggering around like zombies; they had no eyes and their mouths were just holes in their faces. A huge red whirlpool opened in the sky and I grabbed one of the passerby’s and asked them what was going on. “God is dead” they said. And right then I knew, I just knew, that Stuart Little was to blame. Who else could it have been? So I woke up and wrote this song.
LOST HIGHWAY
This has been one of my favorite songs for as long as I can remember. The world certainly doesn’t need another white guy playing a lonesome acoustic version of a Hank Williams song, so I tried to do a version that felt true to how the song made me feel. I’ve never included a cover song on any of my albums before but this somehow felt apt. It kind of came out sounding like The Melvins – abrasive and evil but also maybe a little bit impish, which is great because they’re one of my all-time favorite bands.
NEW ROSES
I wrote this song right before I handed the album in to the record label. I’d been working on the picking pattern for a while and really struggling to find a vocal melody and lyrics that fit, but suddenly they all came to me in one sitting. It starts with Isaac and Abraham coming down from the mountain and works its way through to the present day. Ever since I read the Old Testament I’ve always thought it would have been really funny to be a fly on the wall for that conversation. How do you explain it? “My son, I’m sorry that I nearly burned you alive up there earlier. But, you know… god told me to do it! No hard feelings right? Want to get some ice cream?”
