Burning Hills is the first release by Danny Malone in over a decade; it marks a return to music that has been, by any measure, not an easy one. In the early 2010s, his star was on the rise, with acclaimed indie albums like Balloons and Speeddreamer leading to tours both across the US and internationally. And then it all went very wrong, as a growing addiction resulted in Danny quitting music as he sold his instruments to fund the habit.
After a number of years, he managed to set himself on a path to recovery, but it wasn’t easy, as he explains himself: “I lived an incredibly slow, peaceful life, or tried to“, adding, “I knew that I wanted to change, and so I stuck to the plan, focusing on myself and learning how to not use. It took some time before it started to settle in, where I was like, okay, maybe I am going to make it through this.” However, when he started to care for his mother, sadly burdened with Parkinson’s Disease and increasing dementia, he found this a mixed experience, saying, “There were wonderful healing parts about that, of seeing my mom in a new light and letting go of the baggage of the past. But watching my mom decay and decline started to be really stressful, and I eventually relapsed.” A determination to not allow this to be a permanent state eventually allowed Malone to again get his life back on track, and he found that he regained a desire to create music, and today’s song is the first song that he wrote and reflects on these experiences. Life had some more hard turns coming his way, though.
Malone returned to playing live and travelling to record with his old friend, singer-songwriter Anthony da Costa, at his home studio in East Nashville, enlisting Russell Durham, a composer and multi-instrumentalist known for his work with Fleet Foxes, Feist, Andrew Bird, and Cory Chisel, to create sparse yet strong string arrangements. After years of turmoil, things were finally looking up until tragedy struck Malone’s life once again. Sadly, his beloved brother, best friend, drummer and occasional co-writer Teddy died by suicide in Malone’s Austin home while he was playing a festival in Northern Arkansas – an event for which Teddy had only just helped him pack the van the day before. “The new me was able to survive,” Malone says. “I don’t know if the old me would have been able to.”
Burning Hills is the first song from Danny Malone’s new album Flowers pt. 1, which will be released on February 19th 2027. As the title implies, he intends to release a part 2 as soon as possible afterwards.
