Rival Sons frontman Jay Buchanan has released his debut solo single. The sorrowful, gospel-country Caroline is the first song to emerge from Buchanan's debut solo album, Weapons Of Beauty.
"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," says Buchanan says. "Putting it in a song lets you buy the ticket and take the ride – and then move on."
The video for Caroline finds Buchanan singing in an abandoned coal mine, close to where he wrote much of the album, in an underground, windowless bunker deep in the Mojave Desert.
"As music continues to be choked out by technology, I wanted to draw pictures in the dirt," says Buchanan. "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."
"The silence," he adds, "was both terrifying and liberating. A caterpillar knows when it's time to get into the cocoon."
Eagle-eyed Buchanan fans may have spotted the singer in the recent Bruce Springsteen biopic Deliver Me From Nowhere, leading the Stone Pony house band Cats On A Smooth Surface, alongside two of Greta Van Fleet's Kiszka brothers.
"More than anything, it was just a really good hang," he says. "I played a band leader, so no acting there. Being on stage together playing music was about bringing Jeremy [Allen White, who played Springsteen] into my world, and being on camera in a film was about him bringing me into his. It was amazing. Jeremy and Scott [Cooper, director] made me feel like I belonged there – and that was just what I needed."
The connection with Cooper extends to Weapons Of Beauty, an album sequenced by the director.
"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," says Buchanan. "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."
Weapons Of Beauty is scheduled to arrive on Sacred Tongue Records via Thirty Tigers on February 6, and is available to pre-order now. Full tracklist below.
In 2007, before Rival Sons formed, Buchanan recorded a solo album, Locusts And Wild Honey, that remains unreleased.
Jay Buchanan - Weapons Of Beauty tracklist
1. Caroline
2. High And Lonesome
3. True Black
4. Tumbleweeds
5. Shower of Roses
6. Deep Swimming
7. Sway
8. The Great Divide
9. Dance Me to the End of Love
10. Weapons of Beauty
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
