Pilcrowe

These Badlands is not a concept album—we think. But as we pieced it together throughout 2025, certain themes emerged from the process: perseverance amid desolate times; harsh landscapes and how they inform our views of the world; how something bleak can often disguise itself as something beautiful; and how beauty can hide in struggle; how struggle defines us. In many ways, These Badlands is a sort of three-act play.

The album’s first track, “North Rim,” is inspired by the fabled remote area of the Grand Canyon. It’s a region well away from the throngs that flock elsewhere to the global landmark. The north is wild, free and indifferent. The song envisions bearing witness to incremental change on a landscape over the course of eons while being tied to an often-inhospitable place. “Nowhere Home” bottles the worry and anxiety of awaiting monsoon season in the arid Southwest. “These Badlands” is a more personal meditation on change and moving on from people and places that once held meaning, only to find value in new realities.

At the center of the album is a trio of songs written about the Dust Bowl era of the American Great Plains in the 1930s. “Black Sunday” recounts one of the worst days of the period while “New Deal Dirt” tells of the economic and personal turmoil of the human-caused environmental catastrophe. “Hope in the Harvest” chronicles the many Dust Bowl refugees who would eventually pack it up and move, often to California where the prospects of a new life awaited along with the stresses of being labeled as among the Okie masses.

“All That Remains” spotlights the bare-bones existence of those who inhabit the small desert communities that dot the Southwestern landscape. “Seven Deserts” is an effort to come to terms with commercialized culture. And finally, “Some Days (Los Cerrillos)” was inspired by the ancient rolling hills of northern New Mexico that seem to exist outside of time itself.

These Badlands is Pilcrowe’s second full-length album. It follows 2023’s West of Center and the 2022 EP The Big Burn. As with our previous LP, we crafted These Badlands at our own Woody Mountain Studios in Flagstaff using real drums, guitars, amps and ribbon microphones. The recording process was as unencumbered as possible by studio trickery and artifice—what you hear is what we played, just how we played it.

Flagstaff artist Cole Habay painted the vivid cover for These Badlands—the third time she has contributed her artwork to Pilcrowe’s releases. The piece complements the music, depicting the enigmatic, radiant landscape of northern Arizona’s canyon country.