Sacred Tongue Records
With Weapons of Beauty, Jay Buchanan—best known as the frontman of Rival Sons—delivers an intimate, mature solo album that trades the bombast and swagger of his rock band for something more cinematic and emotionally unguarded. Drawing from roots, blues, Americana, gospel, and soft rock, the record resists easy genre classification.
Much of the album was written during an extended period of solitude in a small underground bunker in the Mojave Desert, and that isolation permeates its tone. The mood is set immediately with the opening track, “Caroline”, a restrained, spacious, country-tinged ballad that feels both tender and searching. Buchanan’s voice moves effortlessly between power and fragility. “High and Lonesome” follows at a slow, meditative pace, infused with slide guitar and blues hues as it wrestles lyrically with regret and self-reflection. The tempo lifts with the gospel-laced “True Black”, where Buchanan’s gritty vocals ride over piano and rhythm elements that evoke the fervour of a revival meeting.
A wide, expansive cinematic quality runs throughout the album, most vividly on “Tumbleweeds”, which conjures the open plains of the North American landscape. The lush “Shower of Roses” reflects on beauty as both a gift and a painful reminder of life’s transience, capturing the tension between joy and sorrow. Its lyrics hint at Buchanan’s relationship with life in the spotlight and his longing for authenticity: “When the crowds have all gone / Lights go out on the stage / When the curtain comes down / You just want them to say / That you never took more than you gave.”
Throughout the record, Dave Cobb’s production keeps the focus firmly on the heart of Buchanan’s songwriting and vocal expression, enhanced by subtle, evocative orchestration. This is demonstrated during one of the album’s highlights, “Deep Swimming”, a song Paul Simon would surely admire. It blends a gentle groove with introspective lyricism. Themes of memory, family, and personal growth unfold with an almost meditative calm, supported by minimal yet lush arrangements of deep bass tones and light percussion.
One of the strongest “Weapons of Beauty” is the song “Sway”, which is simply one of the most beautiful ballads this writer has ever heard. Buchanan’s voice swells with passion as the instrumentation rises in careful crescendos, delivering a vocal performance that is nothing short of phenomenal. “I want you now, while we’re still young, and I want you old”, he sings, the tender, powerful lyrics written for his wife. Next comes “The Great Divide”, which echoes the spirit of 1970s Fleetwood Mac. Opening with plaintive acoustic guitar, it carries a reflective mood tinged with quiet urgency. Buchanan then offers a stripped-down cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Dance Me to the End of Love”, bringing his own soulfulness and gravitas to the song.
The emotional climax of the album comes with the final, cathartic piano-led title track “Weapons of Beauty”. Buchanan can sustain intense emotion more than most, but he almost omitted this song due to its deeply personal nature. However, there is power in vulnerability. The overall message is that beauty, whether in love or art, can be a weapon of resilience in times of hardship. The ending of the song, and the album, is remarkable. You can hear the foot come off the piano pedal, and then silence, but you can hear the silence, as if nothing is something. You hear space, like Buchanan no doubt did while writing alone in that underground bunker.
This is an artist, a sensitive storyteller, who is unbound by his past or expectations. The sounds, spaces and narrative become richer with every listen. Take several walks through the landscape of this record. It’s a journey you will remember. Easily one of the albums of the year, and it’s only February. (We had a long chat with Jay about his new record, which you can read in two parts. The first part is in our current issue, which you can read right here.)
5.5/6 | Anne-Marie Forker
Release date: 6 February 2026