Jonathan Something has shared Country Rose, the opening track and first single from his forthcoming album One More Lonesome Cowboy Song, out 16 October via High Shelter, a new label backed by Virgin Music Group. It arrives with a live session video.
Born Jonathan Searles, the Connecticut songwriter has rebuilt his sound from album to album, moving through garage rock, anti-folk, synth-pop and sample-heavy neo-soul. The new album is a clear departure: a set of Western folk songs he recorded and produced alone, playing every instrument. He roots the writing in the cosmic cowboy tradition of Gram Parsons and Gene Clark, while the recordings sit closer to Neutral Milk Hotel or Elliott Smith — fingerpicked acoustic and electric guitars under hushed, double-tracked vocals.
Country Rose sets the tone. “It’s probably the most autobiographical tune on the album, and it really sets up the slow, meditative mood of the whole record,” Searles says. “I wanted to get myself to a place where I could enjoy making music for the sake of it, where I could create without needing to get anything out of it.”
The record came out of a hard stretch. Searles stepped away from music after 2020, ran audio and visual setups, and weighed screenwriting and filmmaking before a mysterious illness and a back injury pulled him back to songwriting. A sudden anxiety attack at his parents’ piano tipped him into a days-long depression, and he decided to make use of it. “I needed to use it as a catalyst to start thinking more seriously about spirituality and growth and the changes I needed to make in my life,” he says. “And that journey became One More Lonesome Cowboy Song.”
The title is a figure, not a genre. “The cowboy of the album title is metaphorical,” he explains — “that dark, brooding, reclusive part of myself that didn’t know how to be happy. This record is my farewell to him.” The phrase itself surfaces in the closing track, Before I Go.
One More Lonesome Cowboy Song follows 2020’s Cannibal House Rules, a set of synth-driven, mid-’80s-style pop songs built to play like the soundtrack to a horror film that doesn’t exist. Searles’ 2018 debut Outlandish Poetica led to a tour supporting Peter Bjorn and John.
Pre-order/Save “One More Lonesome Cowboy Song,” out 16 October via High Shelter: