Wayfarer enter the dark heart of the American West with new album 'Riders Of The Setting Sun'
Photo Credit: Manon Hure
Denver’s Wayfarer will release their new album Riders Of The Setting Sun on 20th November via Vesperian, marking a bold new chapter for the acclaimed Dark Americana band. Alongside the announcement, the band have unveiled the album’s second single and video, 'Hollow Hearts On The Trail To Eden'. Their most accessible and expansive record to date, Riders Of The Setting Sun sees Wayfarer push their distinctive blend of American West mythology, folk, rock ’n’ roll and post-punk into darker, stranger and more cinematic territory.
Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/DqvV8MTppzE
Stream and pre-order Riders Of The Setting Sun here: https://tr.ee/vesperian_wayfarer
A sombre, melancholic song, ‘Hollow Hearts On The Trail To Eden’ follows a weary traveller wrestling with doubt, betrayal and the weight of his own mistakes as winter closes in. An epic guitar solo brings the song to its emotional peak, as he carries his hollow heart into the darkness, eventually burying it alongside his name.
For Wayfarer, the American West has never been merely a backdrop. It is a character. A memory. A wound. Formed in Denver, Colorado, the band have spent more than a decade developing a sound as vast and unforgiving as the landscape that surrounds them, building a singular strain of Dark Americana from the mythology, history and haunted beauty of the Western United States.
For the first time, Wayfarer have joined forces with visionary producer Ben Chisholm (Chelsea Wolfe), with recording and mixing contributions from James Barone (Beach House) and Iver Sandøy (Enslaved). The result is a record that feels simultaneously ancient and unfamiliar, a strange collision of Western dust, nocturnal highways, widescreen guitars and songs that sound as though they have been waiting for decades to be uncovered.
It is Dark Americana, but not the sepia-toned kind. This is the America after the sunset. The ghosts. The gamblers. The drifters. The dead. The beautiful things that should probably have been left buried.
Adding further weight to the album's lineage, Riders Of The Setting Sun features a remarkable cast of collaborators including David Eugene Edwards (16 Horsepower, Wovenhand), Munly J Munly, Midwife and Kelly Schilling (Dreadnought), while Steve Von Till (Neurosis) provides the spoken introduction to 'The Dusklands'.
The album also features Wayfarer's own take on Kris Kristofferson's 'Casey's Last Ride', a song that sits naturally within the band's dark Americana world, its tale of loneliness, regret and a man disappearing into the night echoing the album's broader fascination with the darker corners of American mythology.
With album artwork created by celebrated artist Tony Stella, whose distinctive film-poster work has become synonymous with some of cinema's most iconic visual worlds, the artwork for Riders Of The Setting Sun feels less like an album cover than the poster for a lost Western, a film that perhaps never existed, but somehow feels familiar. It would also become one of Stella's final works before his passing earlier this year.
Riders Of The Setting Sun is therefore not simply another Wayfarer album. It is a record about endings, departures and the things we carry with us when the road finally runs out.
A record about the American West, not as postcard, but as ghost story. A record where Dark Americana rides into the sunset and doesn't look back.
Riders Of The Setting Sun will be available on Digipak CD, cassette and vinyl LP, with the vinyl edition featuring a dedicated LP booklet and OBI strip.
Watch previous single 'Perdition's Crossing' here: https://youtu.be/R7Ukxm9qA2I
Wayfarer are:
Joe Strong-Truscelli: Guitars
James Hansen: Bass
Shane McCarthy: Vocals, guitars
Isaac Faulk: Drums
Discography:
Children Of The Iron Age (2014)
Old Souls (2016)
World’s Blood (2018)
A Romance With Violence (2020)
American Gothic (2023)
Tracklist:
1. The Dusklands - feat. Steve Von Till
2. Perdition's Crossing – feat. David Eugene Edwards
3. Black Roses & Early Graves
4. Casey's Last Ride – feat. Kelly Schilling
5. Fell Spur
6. Grey Country – feat. Munly J Munly
7. Hollow Hearts On The Trail To Eden
8. Prairies Of Babylon – feat. Midwife
Riders Of The Setting Sun will be available digitally and in the following physical versions:
Ltd. Digipak CD
Ltd tape with clear-orange tape shell and full-color J-card
LP version with black vinyl, LP-booklet, and OBI strip
Ltd. LP version with picture vinyl, die-cut cover, LP-booklet, and OBI strip (500 copies)
Ltd. "high noon heat" LP version with red/gold-metallic splatter vinyl, LP-booklet, poster, and OBI strip (700 copies, exclusive for Europe)
Ltd. "prairie twilight" LP version with orange/red merge vinyl, LP-booklet, poster, and OBI strip (700 copies, exclusive for North America)
Ltd. "glowing embers" LP version with orange/gold/black splatter vinyl, LP-booklet, poster, and OBI strip (500 copies, exclusive for North America)
Ltd. "barren plains" LP version with clear + black/yellow vinyl, LP-booklet, poster, and OBI strip (300 copies, exclusive for Bandcamp Europe and the Vesperian online store)
Ltd. "exit wound" LP version with red/white splatter vinyl, LP-booklet, poster, and OBI strip (300 copies, exclusive for Bandcamp US)
Ltd. "Grand Mesa dawn" LP version with yellow/red ink spot vinyl, LP-booklet, poster, and OBI strip (300 copies, exclusive for Frozen Records, France)