It’s an album of our times, the fragile country we live in, and the emotions that come with the weight of the world.” To summon these songs from the ether and cultivate the chord changes, refine the lyrics, just make those hundreds of little changes, was so much more fulfilling than looking at spreadsheets, packing mail-order, or worrying over the bank accounts. “I think it was due to the focus I'd had to spend doing accounting and non-creative work to make sure our businesses and employees could weather the pandemic-I was simply relieved and overjoyed to be doing something else.

“I have never enjoyed writing or recording an album more than this,” Turla shares of the new LP. According to Turla, the record “shot out of like a bolt of energy” after a year of not touching a guitar, both instrumental and lyrical portions of the project gelling into a collection of songs that occasionally feel experimental to the band’s catalog with surprising influences like Mazzy Star, Serge Gainsbourg, Massive Attack, and The Cure finding their way into the compositions. This new album, of course, was fed by the literary potential of pandemic downtime and the front-row view we’ve all had since 2020 of global and national catastrophe playing out daily on each of the various screens crowding our quarantine setups. While storytelling is generally a touchstone of the folk and Americana traditions the Louisville band pull from, few songwriters within these genres have expanded the scope of their vision the way MBD have, from the comedic song titles on the also comedically named Like The Exorcist, but More Breakdancing released two decades ago at the beginning of their career to the cinematic heights of such epics as the 2008 album opener “Comin’ Home,” which emphasized Turla’s not entirely un-Johnny-Cash-like baritone atop explosive instrumentals. “I almost think of it as a series of novels,” Murder by Death frontman Adam Turla shared of his band’s album output in a press release ahead of the release of their latest LP, Spell/Bound.

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