“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”
– Lucinda Williams
Ben de la Cour’s visceral songwriting grabs you by the heart and doesn’t let go. Weaving evocative stories of desperate characters with his signature “Americanoir” sound, de la Cour shines an empathetic, raw, and at times bleak light on the human condition. New Roses, Ben de la Cour’s sixth album, is a claustrophobic yet hopeful record that is by turns gritty and bleak and soaring and beautiful, building to a heart-wrenching story of reckoning and resilience.
Grammy shortlisted in 2023 for his fifth record Sweet Anhedonia, de la Cour has drawn praise from critics, colleagues, and listeners alike while receiving accolades from American Songwriter, The Telegraph, NPR and more. Heralded as a “prodigious storyteller” (Twangville) and “a standard bearer for Southern Gothic Americana” (Folk Radio UK), de la Cour has been praised for his vivid and powerful lyrics. “Ben de la Cour is hands down one of the best songwriters around,” singer-songwriter Jim White, who produced de la Cour’s last album, says, “he’s a true raconteur, which elevates him to full troubadour status.”
Raised in Brooklyn, de la Cour lived in London, Cuba and across the United States before making his home in the American south over a decade and a half ago. Drawing on inspiration from writers and musicians alike—Townes Van Zandt, Jimi Hendrix, Nick Cave, Nina Simone, Leonard Cohen, James Baldwin and Carson McCullers among them—de la Cour’s gothic folk songs are as heartbreaking as they are beautiful.
While Sweet Anhedonia felt like ”the American heartland witnessed through the window of a car going 80mph” (American Songwriter), New Roses feels like being stuffed into the trunk and driven into an imploding star. The album 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.
De la Cour is a natural storyteller. His lyrics create entire worlds, fully realized and three-dimensional, full of down-and-out characters trying to make it through. “Ben has refined and enriched the sweet, savage way he pulls your heart up through your throat with his quietly tragic characters in devastating scenarios. It is somehow gruesome and viscerally moving, a fine line he manages to amble along with nary a stumble” (The Telegraph). And he doesn’t shy away from writing tragedy. “There is nothing more isolating than happy, everything-is-great music,” de la Cour says, “because then you’re like… well, I really am alone.”
“I Must Be Lonely,” the first track on the album, layers haunting synths with a rumbling beat that barrels toward an ill-fated and inevitable end. We are pulled along by that inescapable supernatural force we call loneliness while de la Cour’s wistful vocals soothe the pain of self-sabotage. Featuring Gin Wife’s haunting harmonies, the track is the emotional equivalent of a middle-of-the-night drive down a deserted highway to nowhere—or worse, to somewhere you know you shouldn’t go.
“The Devil Went Down to Silverlake”, featuring Elizabeth Cook, weaves a familiar tale: You may think you’ve outrun your past, but no amount of bravado or legacy will save you from paying your dues. With a nod to Charlie Daniels’ hit, the devastating reality of de la Cour’s story is that there is always a price to pay when you make a deal with the devil.
De la Cour is at his most vulnerable with “We Were Young Together Once.” The song, inspired by his daughter, is a poignant lullaby about a father’s enduring love and heartbreak over a past that can’t be changed and a world fated for ruin. Excruciating in its tender beauty, this deeply personal track reveals the source of the light that shines through the cracks in de la Cour’s own darkness.
“Jukebox Heart” growls with power and hunger, its commanding chorus circling back on itself like a record that won’t stop spinning. Droning synthesizers and electric guitar draw you in like that dark and mysterious stranger sitting in the shadows at the far end of the bar, and the mournful wails that accompany Josh Klein’s trumpet at the close of the track feel like a fate sealed.
“Stuart Little Killed God (on 2nd Ave),” born of a dream, opens as a folktale grounded in traditional guitar riffs before shapeshifting into an absurdist nightmarescape of a revenge-driven mousehunt for a God-killing rodent. By turns darkly funny and bleakly apocalyptic, the surreal track swirls into a sinking urgency as de la Cour warns “time is starting to unwind”—and as the sky glows red and fire rains down, we are left to reckon with just how real this dream may be.
With a poet’s minimalist sensibility, de la Cour set out to tell a complete story in one minute in “Christina.” De la Cour’s empathetic lyrics guide the way as Emily Scott Robinson’s harmonies help carry the song toward an inevitable fate. Seemingly out of nowhere, de la Cour drops the narrative in favor of a swelling, bittersweet conclusion to the story. “I just started hearing this symphonic movement in my head,” he explains, “I can’t read or write music, but I started layering different stuff and scoring it and it was really fun, and it felt right in the song.”
De la Cour’s cover of “Lost Highway,” written by Leon Payne and originally covered by Hank Williams, is a unique and twisted take on the iconic song. Jarring and dripping in electric guitar with an irregular heartbeat of pounding drums, de la Cour’s version layers distorted, menacing vocals that add an ominous funhouse mirror effect. The result is a surprising cover of a classic that amplifies hopeless doom to a fevered, horror-movie pitch.
Ben de la Cour’s music is filled with juxtaposition and duality. He balances doom and optimism, seeking out kernels of hope in the darkness. New Roses finds this balance and acceptance in the dualities of life, ringing true for anyone who has ever felt the need for both light and darkness—for anyone who has learned the hard way that one cannot exist without the other.
And while much has been written of the darkness that permeates de la Cour’s music, he finds this emphasis exaggerated: “It is an optimistic record,” he says of New Roses. “You can’t be hopeful if you’re not willing to acknowledge the spectrum of the human condition. You can be overwhelmed by beauty and you can be overwhelmed by the horrors and you can be overwhelmed by both.” De la Cour remains an optimist, hopeful that his tales can help the lost, the lonely, the doomed.
New Roses, de la Cour explains, feels like a moment of relief before a tragic end. No one gets out of these stories alive, but there are moments of beauty along the way. “It’s like being drawn and quartered,” he says, “if you’re being pulled apart by horses, there is probably a split second where it feels amazing.” On this record, de la Cour’s tragic songs of lost love and apocalyptic doom are interwoven, always, with an appreciation for the pain—it is, after all, how we know we are still alive.