August 12, 2021

Trace Mountains Announces New Album, Shares Video for New Song

New York singer-songwriter Dave Benton has announced a new Trace Mountains album. The record, House of Confusion, arrives October 22 via Lame-O Records. Benton has also shared the LP’s lead single “America,” along with a music video written, directed, and edited by Trace Mountains guitarist Jim Hill. Check it out below.

“‘America’ is a road song written from a place of disillusionment and desperation,” Benton said 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 follows last year’s Lost in the Country. Benton recorded his album this past winter at a few different 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.

Benton crafted the songs on House of Confusion after losing work during the pandemic. “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 explained. Benton continued:

I was on the road in my mind, 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.

I just started writing songs about that feeling we all have, of suddenly waking up to a brief moment of clear-headedness, like “Oh wow, HOW did we get here?” I started thinking about that a lot and just approached the feeling from different points of view and different voices that felt relatable to me. A lot of that led back to images of the road.