The Band of Heathens Announce New Album “Duende”, Premiere New Song Via Relix

Duende – [duen-de] (noun) 1. a quality of inspiration and passion 2. A heightened sense of emotion, expression and authenticity 3. a spirit.

Austin quintent The Band of Heathens have announced their new album Duende, to be released on January 13th. The group recently premiered their new song “Trouble Came Early” with Relix. The group describes how the inspiration for the song “came about from reading A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage, after a strange night out we had in a bar after a show. Some guy who was blacked-out drunk ended up pulling a knife and coming after us. Fortunately everybody made it out alive, and a seed was planted for the classic character who can’t escape the call of the bars.”

Listen: The Band of Heathens – “Trouble Came Early”

Duende, the title of The Band of Heathens’ fifth studio album (and eighth overall), marks their tenth anniversary as a group. It’s an apt name for a record whose themes explore the collective search for connection and communion in a technology-fueled world increasingly splintered, distracted and lonely.  As band co-founder Ed Jurdi, who first learned of the term, explains, “It’s the essence of the artist,” or as partner Gordy Quist says, “It’s a word we don’t have an equivalent for in English, artistically, that’s where we tried to set the bar, to do what this band does best.”

Duende is currently available for pre-order via iTunes and Amazon.

The group has also released an EPK video to provide an introduction to Duende, as well as a snapshot of where the band currently finds themselves creatively. Watch it HERE.

The term “Americana” was practically invented to describe The Band of Heathens’ approach, which has mutated almost as much as the genre to which they’re identified. And while the Rolling Stones and The Beatles remain touchstones on songs like “Sugar Queen” and “Deep Is Love,” respectively, influences as diverse as Sly and the Family Stone (in the psychedelic fuzz-tones of “Daddy Long Legs”) and Latin music (“Road Dust Wheels”) also rear their heads.  Literary inspirations also come into play, ranging from a character in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar depicted in as a strutting cougar in “Sugar Queen” (“She even talks dirty/When she’s on her knees to pray”) to Tom Standage’s A History of the World in Six Glasses, which recounts how beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea and Coca-Cola have shaped culture and civilization to modern times (“Trouble Came Early”).

“Green Grass of California” – with its praise of today’s strong strains of bud and a fervent plea for legalization — was recorded in Nashville and supposed to include harmonies by Tim Easton, who ate a marijuana cookie and inadvertently lived out the song’s lyrics (“When your eyes are red/Spinning in your head/Remember it’s only in your mind)”), unable to continue.