Fresh from performances at Tamworth’s Country Music Festival, Ben De La Cour has dropped “Appalachian Book of the Dead”, the first track lifted from his fifth album Sweet Anhedonia. As the title suggests, this isn’t one of those upbeat country crossover tracks. It’s a cool, dark and brooding number that really casts a spell. It’s so eerie, and I love it.
“I remember first hearing the phrase “Appalachian Book of the Dead” a long time ago in reference to a poem that I later found out was written by Charles Wright. I think I had it filed away subconsciously for years until Shari Smith at Working Title Farm contacted me with this idea she had about pairing authors and songwriters together on a project and somehow I ended up being paired with Dale Neal who wrote a novel called … “Appalachian Book of the Dead”. So I started working on the song before reading the book, then I read the book and loved it and as soon as I finished it I was able to fill in the few blanks left in the song and it kind of came together in full,” Ben recalled.
“The song is definitely inspired in part by the book but it’s mostly my attempt at capturing the feeling I always get driving through North Carolina and East Tennessee late at night. I always loved the quote by Poe, ‘The best stories are an arabesque of supernatural menace and wry jesting’. This is my feeble attempt at doing justice to that.”
Ben’s new album Sweet Anhedonia drops in April. As he currently spends more than a hundred days touring Australia, Europe, and North America, hopefully we get some shows to coincide with its release.
Image used with permission from Footstomp Music; credit: Nick Nace