Dierks Bentley Will Release a New Album, ‘The Mountain’, in 2018
Dierks Bentley has been teasing ... well, something on social media since early in the new year, and on Wednesday (Jan. 10), he revealed exactly what that something is: a brand-new album. Bentley will release his next project, titled The Mountain, sometime in 2018; readers can press play above to get a small taste of what's to come.
The Mountain will be Bentley's ninth album, and was largely put together in Telluride, Colo. NPR reports that, on the project, the country star "pursues themes of questing and self-actualization across a wide-open terrain of arid deserts and rugged ridgelines, cactus flowers and tumbleweeds;" the songs themselves "possess the propulsive power, programmed loops and digital snap of current country production, the bluegrass textures of mandolin, banjo, fiddle and flatpicked guitar and the shimmery, resonant twang of West Coast country-rock."
"I'm just trying to find ways to make it meaningful to me," Bentley says. "It's kinda like, I want to have my cake and eat it, too. I want to have a big single that sounds gigantic that you listen to on the surface and love it, but if you're a fan, you dig deeper and go, 'Oh, I see what he's doing.'"
Bentley tells NPR that his inspiration for The Mountain came following a set at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in 2017. He wrote with names familiar in Nashville -- Natalie Hemby, Ross Copperman and more -- but in Telluride, not in Music City; Bentley recorded the album at a studio about 30 minutes outside of town.
"We'd write all day long, and around four o'clock, we'd meet on my deck at this tiny little house and start drinking some beers and hanging out, watch the sunset, watch the mountains change colors, everyone playing songs," Bentley recalls. "You felt like you really could just be free. I'd never done anything like that."
Bentley last released a new album, Black, in 2016. The record spawned two No. 1 singles and another Top 5 single. Before the holidays, he slipped a couple new songs into his setlists for two shows in Las Vegas, Nev.
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