The Band Camino Dug Deep on Their Sophomore Album ‘The Dark’ in Order to Grow

The Band Camino are in their healing era, whether they actively realize it or not. When it comes to romantic relationships, the Nashville-based trio have been known in their music to be self-deprecating and even admit to unhealthy patterns for the sake of love.

But their sophomore album, The Dark, despite its title, looks different. On “Same Page,” singer and guitarist Jeffery Jordan lets go of a relationship that seems perfect on paper, but things aren’t as they seem. On “Novocaine,” Spencer Stewart (vocals, guitar) allows himself to open back up to love — even if he feels like he needs something to numb the fear. On “Let It Happen,” the boys do as they say and let life come to them as it will.

“This album feels more mature,” Jordan tells Billboard, with Stewart agreeing and adding, “It’s another year of life and we’ve been trusting ourselves a lot more.”

And while the romantic and psychological themes of the album come from a more mature headspace, so does the music. The group took the emotion-filled lyricism and infectious hooks that fans love and “refined it,” as Jordan notes, with the final result diving deep into what a healing heart feels like, encompassed with sleek guitar riffs and swelling drum beats to help dance through the emotional rollercoaster of musical therapy. The Dark paints the picture of a band who is in fact the same page, as the aforementioned song title seeks.

“I feel like when we first started out and we got our record deal, we were so immersed in the whole whirlwind of it,” drummer Garrison Burgess recalls, “But we figure out how we work together better as time goes on because we’ve gotten to know each other and longer. We can go through hard things in our own lives, and get to live together through each other’s individual hardships.”

Jordan playfully adds, “If we didn’t like each other, this would be a lot harder.” He then takes a more serious tone, continuing, “We lucked out with compatibility, for sure. It’s hard to find it with people whom you’re touring with, creating with and in the studio with all the time.”

Stewart offers that the trio “communicate really well,” as can be seen on the most basic level in how coherent their albums always sound. “When you know, you know,” he says of his bond with his bandmates.

While chatting with The Band Camino, one topic that comes up frequently is the pressure of a sophomore slump after a successful 2021 self-titled debut that featured lasting hits including “I Think I Like You” and “Song About You.”

“If you start thinking about a sophomore album in the wrong way, it can f— you up,” Jordan admits, before Stewart chimes in to comfort his longtime friend and musical collaborator, marking yet another indication of the group’s emotional synchronicity.

“Growth is never linear ever,” Stewart assures Jordan, adding, “It can be tough to have that pressure to make sure you always succeed in order. You don’t want to fail and fall out of people’s eyes and then go on to make your best work on the third one but it’s too late.”

Jordan quickly finds grounding in the conversation, once more proving his mental and emotional growth over the last few years. “The pressure does force me to think about why I love doing what I’m doing,” he concludes. “It pulls me out of the numbers game and the success game and the Instagram attention game. I think about the fact that I started this because I was in my bedroom, playing my piano and it made me feel something.”

As we wrap our conversation, it became abundantly clear how much digging into The Dark stepped the Band Camino directly into the light. The Dark is out August 11 via DBLBLK Records/Elektra Records.