Today I’m thrilled to bring everyone the latest single from The Pinkerton Raid (solo project of singer-guitarist Jesse James DeConto), called “Blood In My Eyes.” The song, which comes from the upcoming album entitled The Highway Moves the World, tackles the theme of disintegrating friendships and not knowing where to turn to next when picking up the broken pieces. DeConto shared this about the new single:
”It’s a paradox—to tell a good story, you need all the messy details, but how do you do it without airing other people’s dirty laundry? ‘You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.’ Anne Lamott wrote that, though I don’t totally agree with her, so I won’t name names. I feel more protective of the people I care about, or once cared about, or that I just know have feelings of their own—even if they might have hurt me. Two wrongs don’t make a right, you know? My mom taught me that, and it’s at the core of “Blood in My Eyes.” It’s easy to name hurt, but it’s much harder to identify the causal chain that led to it, much less assign blame and start handing out punishment. One of the reasons I write songs is to express the pain in a healthy way. With this particular song, I was trying to capture something I think we all experience: We all feel hurt; we have a pretty good idea who hurt us; but we’re also pretty sure we share some of the blame; so we don’t trust our own experience of the situation—we’re blinded by our own pain. Deep down—more than vengeance or anger—what we really want is for things to go back to how they were before. And holding on to that hope is a lot more difficult than being mad about what went wrong. With “Blood in My Eyes,” I suppose I’m trying to manifest that kind of hope for you, me or anybody else who needs it. Forgiveness is good for its own sake, whether or not there’s any reconciliation with whoever it is that hurt us.
If you’re ready to take the next dramatic step with The Pinkerton Raid, they’re waiting for you to join the ride. You can also pre-save the track here.