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Aug 12, 2021 By Mark Redfern Photography by Dean Engle

Trace Mountains (the project of New York’s Dave Benton) has announced a new album, House of Confusion, and shared its first single, “America,” via a video for it. House of Confusion is due out October 22 via Lame-O. Check out “America” below, followed by the album’s tracklist and cover art.

“‘America’ is a road song written from a place of disillusionment and desperation,” says Benton in a press release. “My guitarist Jim Hill created this video inspired in equal parts by Easy Rider, Wayne’s World, and The Lord of the Rings to mirror the themes of the song in jest. Writing and arranging this song was a real journey for us, with lots of rewrites and changes. I almost cut the song from the album at one point because it was torturing me so much! I wanted it to be real but also lighthearted and upbeat. I think Jim captured that energy perfectly in his visual interpretation of the song.”

House of Confusion is the third Trace Mountains album and the follow-up to 2020’s Lost in the Country. It was recorded in the winter of 2021 in various locations—“a studio in the foothills of the Shawangunk Ridge in New York, a home along the Rondout Creek of the Hudson Valley, a Brooklyn apartment, and a small shared music workspace in Denver, Colorado” is how a press release describes them.

Benton was aided in the recordings by his regular backing band—Jim Hill (guitar, keys), Greg Rutkin (drums), and Susannah Cutler (voice, mellotron). Also joining in were Bernard Casserly (bass), J.R. Bohannon (pedal steel, guitar), David Grimaldi (guitar - tracks four and five), and Ryan Jewell (drums, marimba - track four).

Benton lost his job due to the pandemic and so found himself with the time to quickly follow-up Lost in the Country. “I was used to waking up early for my warehouse job, so when I got laid off, I just kept up that schedule and implemented another daily regimen focused on improving my guitar playing and writing songs,” he explains in the press release.

“I was on the road in my mind,” he adds, “thinking back on my life as a musician—my successes, my failures—and I was reflecting on the ever-ongoing process of moving on that my life has been made up of.”

House of Confusion Tracklist:

01 Seen It Coming
02 If You Do
03 On My Knees
04 7 Angels
05 IDK
06 The Moon
07 Late
08 America
09 Morningstar
10 Eyes on the Road
11 Heart of Gold

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