Metal Anarchy

Jay Buchanan (Rival Sons) has announced that he will be releasing a new solo album, titled “Weapons Of Beauty,” on February 6. A video for the effort’s first single, “Caroline,” can be found below. Pre-orders can be found HERE.

“Weapons Of Beauty” Track Listing:

01. “Caroline”
02. “High And Lonesome”
03. “True Black”
04. “Tumbleweeds”
05. “Shower Of Roses”
06. “Deep Swimming”
07. “Sway”
08. “The Great Divide”
09. “Dance Me To The End Of Love”
10. “Weapons Of Beauty”

Buchanan worked on the album in an underground, windowless bunker in the Mojave Desert. He said the following about that experience:

“The silence was both terrifying and liberating. A caterpillar knows when it’s time to get into the cocoon.”

He added:

“As music continues to be choked out by technology, I wanted to draw pictures in the dirt. This approach is right with me, and I’ve just come to a point where there is no longer a choice. ‘Weapons Of Beauty’ is the sound of these plates shifting within me, too loud to ignore. Surprisingly, I’ve never known a vulnerability to feel so empowering.”

He also discussed “Caroline,” which serves as an “aching letter to a lost home or lover”:

“I suppose that writing about unquenchable grief allows you a kind of permission to pay respect to those deep chasms in your life without wallowing in them. Putting it in a song lets you buy the ticket and take the ride — and then move on.”

He also commented on filming the video in gold mines:

“I can see a parallel here, spending twelve hours deep in the earth, trying to mine our own treasure, knowing full well so many have perished in those same caves chasing a future cut dangerously short. That’s a hell of a way to spend a Sunday!”

Buchanan also revealed that he recruited director Scott Cooper to sequence the album after appearing in his Bruce Springsteen biopic “Deliver Me From Nowhere”:

“More than anything, it was just a really good hang. I played a band leader, so no acting there. Being on stage together playing music was about bringing Jeremy [Allen White] into my world, and being on camera in a film was about him bringing me into his. It was amazing. Jeremy and Scott [Cooper] made me feel like I belonged there — and that was just what I needed.

On the flight home after the film wrapped, Scott and I had a conversation that stayed with me as I went directly to the desert. I don’t want to get too personal, but we were kind of living on opposite sides of the same coin that day, and he was the last person I spoke to before my desert exile. Months later, the night the record was finished, when I listened to the playback for the first time, I immediately thought of him sequencing it. The whole undertaking had left me so raw that the pan was just too hot for me to pick up. I knew I could trust him — if he’d help me.”

Buchanan also discussed the album cover, which was painted by artist Jeremy Lipking:

“Jeremy Lipking is an old friend and family on my wife’s side. We’ve been wanting to work together forever. He was the only person to hear some of my demos direct from the desert. I told him I was writing a Jeremy Lipking painting. It was important to me that the music have a scenic quality — the America I’ve seen over decades of touring: lonesome sunsets, big-clouded skies, silhouetted by our dreams and failures.”