Carter Vail’s time is now. Over the last three months, the Connecticut-hailing musician’s short-and-snappy songs (“Dirt Man” and “Aliens Ain’t Sh*t,” among them) have stolen the internet’s heart, propelling his follower count into the millions, granting him the opportunity to tour with Yung Gravy this fall and earning him a rare nod from Apple Music’s Zane Lowe.
But the highlight reel doesn’t end there. The absurdist pop-rocker has just released his sophomore album: 100 Cowboys, a nine-track project filled with his most personal work to date.
“With all of my music so far, it just came out of a desire to make music rather than a specific inciting incident in my life,” Vail said in a statement. “That all changed with 100 Cowboys.” Like many of the best records in history, the album was inspired by an unmooring breakup. “Emotionally, I just didn’t want to deal with it beyond wanting to write about it. I locked myself in my studio with my roommate and we wrote this whole record in a month.”
Written and produced in collaboration with Noah Tauscher, the album’s nine songs came to life in only four weeks—with the exception of “Nashville,” which Vail, who currently lives in Los Angeles, wrote two years ago when leaving the South. The swift process, he said, was cathartic.
100 Cowboys takes its name from Vail’s love for Spaghetti Westerns, and it’s also a nod to his days recording country tracks in Nashville. “I like how campy old cowboy movies are, and in a lot of ways I think that’s what being a musician is like,” said Vail. “You can be your own persona. A lot of these songs are super personal to me but dressing them up as pop and rock songs is a lot of fun. It’s how I can share this brief period of my life that was really sad.”
Listen to Carter Vail’s 100 Cowboys on Spotify and Apple Music below.
