Wormburner Talk New Album

Based upon their name alone, its OK to see a band with a handle like Wormburner and assume it’s a raging, full-on death metal band on Relapse Records or Profound Lore.

But in reality, this Brooklyn outfit crafts music akin to a jangly throwback to groups like Guadalcanal Diary and Let’s Active in their approach to songwriting.

“After a show, someone approached us and said our set sounded like ‘lost songs from an unidentifiable 80s college rock band,’” explained Hank Henry, lyricist and lead vocalist. “We’d heard this before. The New Yorker had made a similar ‘80s college rock’ reference when trying to categorize Wormburner. Yes, our music might sound vaguely familiar, but no one has ever quite put their finger on it. I like to think we are students of our record collections, and we welcome it when listeners search out our influences when hearing our songs.” 

Wormburner’s new album comes out today. Entitled Last of the Winter Light, the LP finds Wormburner achieving new heights in their creativity, populating these new tunes with people and places frozen in time.

Legendary VJ Matt Pinfield once hosted Wormburner vocalist Hank Henry for an in-depth interview on MTV’s 120 Minutes. But the band remains an outlier. And despite limited commercial response to their work, Wormburner continues to release time-tested material that is filled with personality and heart.

Mixes for the new album were handled by Phil Palazzolo (Okkervil River, New Pornographers, Neko Case, Ted Leo + Pharmacists). Wormburner recently expanded to a six-piece lineup, giving their live performances even more throttle than they’ve given their fans in the past. 

And if you’re in New York City on Thursday, June 12th, the band will be celebrating the release of the new LP at Mercury Lounge, where they will be sharing the stage with the acclaimed Cincinnati band Wussy. 

In light of the album’s release on this Bandcamp Friday, Hank Henry took time to give us a song-by-song commentary of Last of the Winter Light.

Even if you got tricked into thinking they are simpatico with the likes of Cattle Decapitation and Gatecreeper, Wormburner is worth checking out if you’re a fan of bands like Violent Femmes, Camper Van Beethoven and the Mountain Goats.

Palace Café — People ask if this song is about a bar in my Brooklyn neighborhood by the same name. The answer is “sort of”. Years ago when I was living in Manhattan, I read a wartime collection of short stories by William Styron. One of Styron’s stateside characters spent his evenings drinking at the Palace Café, not in Brooklyn but in the Carolinas if I recall correctly. I thought the name sounded very lyrical, and I held onto it as an idea for a song title. Then when I moved to Brooklyn I found myself face-to-face with a seemingly ancient bar by the same name. The bar doesn’t seem to have changed in a hundred years, and it felt like the perfect setting for a story about how decades of decay and neglect can impact the way a community sees itself.

 

Maryann — This might be the best song I’ve ever written. I had the lyrics finished but, as a band, it took us quite a bit of workshopping to get the song right. The result is a recording that’s got dynamics, a memorable chorus, and verses that are packed with vivid details about the struggles and questionable redemptions of a combat veteran returning home from the field of battle. I guess I’ve written about this character on past albums, but I especially like the way he shows up in this song.

 

Seven Hours Upstate — Shortly after I became single in 2023, I connected with someone on a dating app who shared their origin story of growing up in frigid Upstate New York, feeling misunderstood, and finally arriving in New York City to find liberation. The lyrics for this song were informed by that chat, and they settled in nicely with a guitar composition my bandmate John Hastings shared with me around that same time. I’ve always felt there’s a whiff of Stephen Stills in the guitar parts on this song.

 

Restless Nation — We came up with this song during the pandemic after George Floyd was killed. Wormburner guitarist John Hastings had the music and the song title, then I filled in the verses. It was a tense time in America and, naively, we probably thought that tension was reaching its peak. Things don’t seem to have improved much.

 

Between the Moon and Mars — Our friend Jon Dinklage handled the strings arrangement for this song. He’s known for touring with Rush as their onstage violinist. This “strings” approach was a first for us as a rock band, and I think it really works. Looking back on the lyrics, unintentionally this song seems to be about endings, mortality, aging, fate, faith and self-deception. It’s weighty subject matter, but somehow it’s uplifting, too.  

 

Alumni Magazines — This is a song about class distinction. An upper class character and a working class character come together in romantic relation, and the sparks fly. I’ve always appreciated how Jarvis Cocker of Pulp tackled this topic, and I wanted to try my hand at it.  

 

Somewhere in LA — This was one of the earliest songs we wrote for the album. We actually recorded a pretty good demo in Los Angeles proper, which helped get the song up on its feet.  

 

The Cobra Canyon Mine — There’s a story in my family about how my great-great-Uncle left home for the American West in the 1880s, never to return. The last anyone heard from him, he was working in a silver mine and sleeping with a pistol beneath his head. I tried to write a song from his perspective, and this was the outcome. Alan Weatherhead played pedal steel guitar on this recording. We met Alan years ago in Richmond when he engineered and mixed an LP we recorded with David Lowery.

 

More Like I Do Now — This is probably the poppiest song on the album. Several of us fought hard to squeeze it onto Side A because of how it lightens the mood. But sequencing the LP for vinyl has its challenges. There’s a drum part on the choruses that we borrowed from a Luna song called “Slash Your Tires”

 

Hot Nites — This is a coming-of-age song , a summertime song that doesn’t really fit with the other compositions on an album titled “Last of the Winter Light”. We thought about leaving this song off the LP because it’s such a thematic departure, But I think the juxtaposition actually works. The lyrics sometimes make me picture a scene that might have been deleted from the Richard Linklater film “Dazed and Confused”

 

Ten Years From Now (Hey Norman) — Wormburner guitarist/keyboardist Terry Solomone wrote the music for this song. I sketched out some lyrics, and we went into the studio one night with very limited expectations. But the experience that evening was immediate. The song really came together quickly. This recording is bookended by some radio chatter from a snowstorm that socked Western New York State in the mid-1960s, punctuating the album’s winter theme.