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The War on Drugs’ keyboardist Robbie Bennett has two new albums dropping before the year is up. Both Steloken and Circulation will arrive on December 11 via American Dreams, adding 29 new tracks in total to Bennett’s solo catalog. Yesterday, he shared one song from each album; listen to “Sister” (from Steloken) and “The Light on Your Face” (from Circulation) below.
Both albums follow Bennett’s 2020 solo debut, Permanent World. He developed each track using the same keyboard he plays in the War on Drugs, but made them by sending MIDI from an acoustic player piano into an Oberheim OB-X8 synthesizer, permitting both instruments to play at once. He later incorporated layers of Fender Rhodes, vocoder, and Soma Terra, a “polyphonic microtonal synthesizer with a gyroscope and pressure-sensitive sensors.” “I want the music to be like you’re walking through an unfamiliar place you want to keep exploring and never have to circle back to where you started,” Bennett mused in press materials.
Last month, Bennett also featured on the War on Drugs’ first new song since 2022, “Who’s That.” The band hasn’t released a solo record since 2021’s I Don’t Live Here Anymore, but they did return with their second career live album, aptly titled Live Drugs Again, in 2024.