Noirer than noir, but with bigger bandwidth.

Release Date: 6th June 2025

Label: Jullian

Format: CD / Vinyl / Digital

Anhedonia, his last, was one of ATB’s Best Ofs, for 2023, a dauntingly gaunt slice of american country gothic noir, americanoir for short. Having drawn praise from sundry sources, not least Lucinda Williams, you might think that, for album number six, he’d want to replay and revisit much the style and substance of its predecessor. You’d be wrong, largely, not that this doesn’t visit similar territory, just with a bigger box of toys. Rather than relying just on his reliably rolling acoustic guitar, he has plugged in all manner of extra kit, jamming with himself, deep in the night and at his home studio, adding loops and aged synths to the brew to find what he may well call some weird shit. I can imagine him calling it that, with a laconic grin.

some weird shit?

Opening on some squonky and heavily treated notes, maybe a keyboard, possibly a guitar, Cour starts to sing, sounding way croonier than I recall, for the exuberantly languid I Must Be Lonely. Some possibly electronic drums slot in, with occasional blips and squips bursting through. Breaking into falsetto for the chorus, abetted by the harmonies of Gin Wife (me, neither but a brilliant name), it is desperately sad. A throwaway strum of guitar then beckons in The Devil Went Down To Silverlake, and a change of mood to swagger: “the Devil’s on his way to Silverlake and he’s a’whistling his tune.”

With a title like that there has to be a nod to Charlie Daniels, and indeed there is, in the second verse, much as you realise the atonal howls that hover about Cour’s words are from a fiddle. Just about the only other instrumentalist on the album, Billy Contreras provides said fiddle, all else, the guitar, additional electric, bass and drums, is from Cour. The bv’s, near lost in the maelstrom, are, this time, from Elizabeth Cook. It is a lairy, lurchy hornpipe and quite literally grabs attention, as it becomes less and less restrained.

back into darkness

Bad Star steps back into the darkness of Anhedonia for a slow burn awash with harmonica and lap steel, Cour intoning a tale of travel to the edge, and not necessarily coming back. A companion piece to Springsteen’s Stolen Car, it has none of the hope of that song(!?) and all of the pathos. There is fiddle again, adding some savage midnight of the soul clarity.

Giving no time to rue on that it is straight into the Crazy Horse-like ragged riffage of Beautiful Day. Oddly, with that title, there is actually an element of how a Horse/Levellers mash-up might sound, if without any much the cheer: “but if this is heaven, I think I’ve been had“. The guitar sweeps and sears every bit as shakily as, well, Shakey, and it’s great. The hit that this is not a re-run of the last record is now obvious, a blunt blow that may take a couple of listens to accomodate, as it did for me.

A Familiarity with wounds

We Were Young Together Once is a simpler construct, mainly guitar and vocal, a lullaby stacked with regret and inspired by his daughter. Like Bad Star, it shows off Cour’s innate familiarity with the wounds of a life lived hard, self-inflicted, inflicted by circumstance or those still yet to come. Some winsome orchestration closes the song and sounds like clarinet, but probably isn’t. His website suggests “this deeply personal track reveals the source of the light that shines through the cracks in de la Cour’s own darkness“, and I’m not sure if that makes it better or worse.

The constant switch between styles then continues for Jukebox Heart, a slow rollercoaster that reeks of carnival, and not in a good way. Not a bad way, either, sort of like a Steven King without any happy ending in sight, and some malevolent trumpet, from Josh Klein. With his delivery channeling a mix of Mark Lanegan and Iggy Pop, so too does the melody. (Can I leave you with that thought?)

minimalist simplicity

Sometimes as you are sifting through the contents of a new release, still uncertain which way the runes will fall, there comes a song that just stops time, suspending all thought until you play it again. And again. Christina is such a song, and even were the rest of the album to fall short, would still be enough to make it great. We know know the runes are falling positively, which thus makes this song even better. It’s short. Very short, perhaps two verses, yet packs in a whole boxset of damaged humanity, vivid in the minimalist simplicity. I’ll say no more, as long as you promise to do nothing else, whilst you listen to the wry wordage. For as many times as it takes. The instrumental coda gives near sufficient time to bring your wits back to earth to press replay.

Tendrils not clutter

King Rex – Biloxi begins with that sort of plinky piano once so enamoured by, yes, him again, Neil Young, before a heavy handed guitar strum takes over, the first part becoming the second part of the paired tunes. A miniature epic in the style of Young’s Buffalo Springfield output, Broken Arrow or Expecting To Fly, if with less extraneous clutter, surely this is an influence. Even slower to seep in than some of the other songs here, it might seem a let down after the grandeur of Christine, which was what I was going to write, ahead of realising how caught up I had become in the tendrils the songwriter had laid about me. (Aka I got it!)

To be fair, I was less keen on the quirky idea of Stuart Little Killed God (On 2nd Avenue), despite the agreeable bass line, and the catchy chorus, that very catchiness feeling something alien to the author. Maybe a few more listens? It wouldn’t surprise me.

souls in torment…?

But maybe that is/was by design, so as to soften up any unwary listener for the only cover on the album, Leon Payne’s Lost Highway, a hit back in 1948, if much better known in the version by Hank Williams a year later. For Hank surely never done it quite like this, with a welter of deep fuzz and feedback, as monolithic drums pound and pummel, the sound of souls in torment, and much more Dominic Walsh territory than the usual Og. Little tinkles of identifiably what once was twang filter in and out of focus, which is clever, before Cour moans and latterly howls out the lyric. It probably doesn’t matter whether you like it or not, you’ll certainly remember it.

The title track is then back to good cop, a gentle meander of picked guitar, as close a love song, I think, as Cour is going to provide, especially as the accompaniment limbers up. Misty Harlowe adds some harmonies and a sepulchral organ adds icy notes, with even the guitar from the track before popping by to say hello. A bizarre mix of styles, it might be a metaphor for the whole quandary of who quite, now, is Ben de La Cour. And that’s good enough for me.

I’m going to resist the grand guignol of Lost Highway; I’m sure you can find it somewhere. Instead, have a flavour of the first song, I Must Be Lonely:

Ben De La Cour online : Website / Facebook

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