Dan Andriano & The Bygones release new album Dear Darkness

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Dear Darkness, the debut studio album from Dan Andriano & The Bygones is out now via Epitaph Records. The project is fronted by multifaceted singer-songwriter and instrumentalist Dan Andriano and features Dylan & Randy Moore (Get Married).

The self-produced project finds Andriano, most known for his role as bassist and co-vocalist in Chicago punk rock band Alkaline Trio, venturing into deeply personal lyrical territory while also pushing the limits of just what his unclassifiable sound can be.

Andriano first began work on what would become Dear Darkness during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, writing demoes and raiding his archives of unfinished ideas, doing so more out of a deep-seated need to create than with any true end project in mind. Having spent so much of his life touring and making music, the time off forced by the pandemic was foreign to Andriano, who, at moments, struggled with how to use this newfound freedom, but also found it to be fruitful for his creative process.

In addition to writing, Andriano used his time during the pandemic to broaden his already encyclopedic musical knowledge, saying, “I spent that whole time trying to get better at music. I learned a lot about music. I sat in my garage every day and just played guitar and, you know, tinkered with basses. Which is something I try to do anyway, but I did it with a little more of an active interest in education, like time I feel like I lost learning or trying to get better at music while I was just on tour doing the same thing.”

Originally, Andriano had been hopeful to wrap the session with an EP, but after finishing the first week with so much material to work with — and felt such a natural rapport with the Moore brothers — that the impromptu session led to a full-length album. “It did feel sort of magical, just being that everything fell into place in such a crazy time when nothing was falling into place. That was something I haven’t felt in a long time,” says Andriano.