Ben de la Cour

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Grammy-nominated Nashville-based artist Ben de la Cour is keeping to the edgy side in a genre that has become increasingly polished and pop-friendly, with songs that explore life’s murky corners and shadowy characters. His stark tales of heartbreak, supernatural menace and the ever-present spectre of death harken back to folk’s roots, making him a modern torchbearer of a classic sound.

Weaving evocative stories of desperate characters with his signature “Americanoir” sound, de la Cour shines a raw, empathetic, and at times bleak light on the human condition. After receiving praise from American Songwriter, Twangville, The Telegraph and NPR for his 2023 release "Sweet Anhedonia", de la Cour returns with his heart-wrenching sixth album, "New Roses". A collection of what he describes as “night songs,” the album marks a sonic evolution into stranger, heavier, synth-inspired territory. This shift adds new layers to his delicately fingerpicked story songs, creating something that is at once soaring and beautiful, hammering and claustrophobic, yet ultimately hopeful and resilient.

Raised in Brooklyn, de la Cour lived in London, Cuba and across the United States before making his home in the American south over a decade and a half ago. Drawing on inspiration from writers and musicians alike —Townes Van Zandt, Jimi Hendrix, Nick Cave, Nina Simone, Leonard Cohen, James Baldwin and Carson McCullers among them — de la Cour’s gothic folk songs are as heartbreaking as they are beautiful.

While much has been written of the darkness that permeates de la Cour’s music, he finds this emphasis exaggerated: “It is an optimistic record,” he says of New Roses. “You can’t be hopeful if you're not willing to acknowledge the spectrum of the human condition. You can be overwhelmed by beauty and you can be overwhelmed by the horrors and you can be overwhelmed by both.” De la Cour remains an optimist, hopeful that his tales can help the lost, the lonely, the doomed.

New Roses, de la Cour explains, feels like a moment of relief before a tragic end. No one gets out of these stories alive, but there are moments of beauty along the way. “It’s like being drawn and quartered,” he says, “if you’re being pulled apart by horses, there is probably a split second where it feels amazing.” On this record, de la Cour’s tragic songs of lost love and apocalyptic doom are interwoven, always, with an appreciation for the pain—it is, after all, how we know we are still alive.