Chicago-based songwriter and composer Daniel Knox has revealed the details of his fifth full-length: it’s called Won’t You Take Me With You and will arrive on January 15 via his own H.P. Johnson Presents imprint. Already an accomplished storyteller in his songs, for his new record Knox has spun even more detailed webs of character and emotion. He says:
“Every song on Won’t You Take Me With You has a trap door that leads to one or more other songs on the record. I wanted the songs to stand apart but still hold hands. It was important to me that these songs all know each other, but not necessarily live in the same time and place.”
Lead single “Fool In The Heart” plays like a graceful caress, piano chords rising and falling in gentle waves while serene and angelic adornments flutter in the background like softly-falling snow. Knox’s rich baritone matches the understated grandiosity of the instrumentation, but his story is by turns acerbic, pitying and hopeless. With painterly-like detail and poetry, he unfolds a tale of lost love and a former passion receding into the mists of time. While he graciously sings of memories and deep-set emotion, there are also plenty of more brutal images and ideas floated in “Fool In The Heart”, culminating in a moment when he considers driving off the road to an ignominious end. All the while, “Fool In The Heart” remains gorgeously billowing, reminding us that this is all an internal monologue, and ultimately his disgruntled musings have no effect on the ever-moving world around him.
Daniel Knox’s Won’t You Take Me With You is released on January 15 via H.P. Johnson Presents (pre-order). You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
