New York–based songwriter and guy illustrator Dylan Balliett is revealing today that his fourth album as Spirit Night will arrive at the end of the summer. Bury the Dead is his first full-length since 2015’s Shame (touched up and re-released in 2018), and it was initially recorded early last year in Ranson, West Virginia—Balliett’s homestate which looms large over the LP’s 10 tracks—with the help of Rozwell Kid’s Jordan Hudkins and longtime collaborators Trey Curtis and Ryan Hizer before being tinkered with over the following year (during various dog- or cat-sitting gigs, per Balliett) with the help of mastering engineer Alan Douches, known for his work on plenty of familiar early-’00s metal and emo releases ranging from Dillinger Escape Plan to The Promise Ring.
Bury the Dead’s lead single hints at the album landing somewhere between those two poles, with the equally anthemic and balladic “Country Roads” borrowing from various alt-rock scenes of the era to bolster the sense of nostalgia fueling its lyrics. “Emo, punk rock, early-2000s Saddle Creek and Dischord Records—that stuff saved my life back in those days,” Balliett writes in the record’s press notes. “And for whatever reason, I wanted to make an album that would have saved my 17-year-old life. I’ve always wanted to. And I think I did this time.”
Blending powerful guitar riffs and layered vocals in its rousing chorus, “Country Roads” addresses Balliett’s changing relationship to the karaoke-fied John Denver song it takes its name from. “I heard drunken demons scream that song on the streets of Morgantown for enough years that it transformed into something ugly in my mind; now, more than a decade removed from my college days, I am once again able to appreciate its transcendent beauty, untainted by its former context in my life,” he shares. “For my own ‘Country Roads,’ I wanted to capture the same sense of longing and nostalgia present in John Denver’s but from the perspective of someone who just might rather not be reminded of their home far away.
“I may have succeeded in that goal,” he adds, “as the song has cemented itself in my mind over time not as my anti–West Virginia song, but just as my West Virginia song—a bittersweet love letter to a place I actually would love to visit again sometime soon.”
Check out the video for the new track below, which compiles scenes from, you guessed it, country roads. You can also find the track on Bandcamp here, and check out its B-side—a cover of Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads”—on Spotify here.
