Westerman Releases Expertly Crafted Debut 'Your Hero Is Not Dead'

Westerman has shared his debut album titled Your Hero Is Not Dead, out now via Partisan Records and Play It Again Sam. The project consists of 12 expertly crafted songs following his short but sweet Ark EP from 2018.

Westerman has spent the past two years releasing minimal and moving singles like “Blue Comanche”, “Think I’ll Stay”, “Waiting on Design” and finally the title track to this album “Your Hero Is Not Dead”.

Your Hero Is Not Dead was written alongside frequent collaborator and friend Nathan Jenkins (who also records as Buillon) primarily in Southern Portugal, then finished in London. Tracks exist in somewhat of a dreamlike state — Westerman balances his search for things to be optimistic about while being presented with a landscape that’s all too dreary. “I wanted to make something that’s eventually uplifting,” Westerman said about the project’s origins in a recent press release. “I wanted to say in as unguarded terms as I could — there are reasons for hope.”

On “Waiting on Design,” Westerman finds his perfect balance through atmospheric instrumental phases full of underlying synths. His vocals hover above the end of a relationship. “I was thinking about the absurdity of the self, and how nobody wants to look at themselves from the perspective of the people they hurt,” Westerman said of the track. “What’s interesting to me about storytelling isn’t necessarily the stories themselves, but the mutual connection that comes from people’s understanding of what’s being conjured by that story.”

Stream Westerman’s impressive debut below. In more music news, Leon Bridges connected with Terrace Martin for his new single “Sweeter”, a song that he describes was “written from the perspective of a black man taking his last breath and feeling his spirit leave his body.”