Dark Horses

Dark Horses is a 2026 acoustic retrospective by Alberta singer-songwriter Corb Lund, released by New West Records on August 7. Rather than compiling the original recordings, Lund selected 11 songs from across his catalogue—one from each previous album—and rerecorded them alone, in chronological order, with voice and acoustic guitar. The result is a concise, roughly 36-minute survey that moves from the early “Untitled Waltz” through “Guitar from the Wall,” “No Roads Here,” “The Rodeo’s Over,” “Especially a Paint,” and “Counterfeiter’s Blues,” ending with “Out on a Win.”

These stripped-back versions foreground the qualities that can be partly hidden by fuller country-rock arrangements: Lund’s dry wit, conversational phrasing, precise guitar playing, and unusually vivid Western storytelling. Subjects include rodeo life, ranching, horses, conflict, history, bad decisions, and people navigating hard landscapes; songs such as “Talkin’ Veterinarian Blues,” “Priceless Antique Pistol Shoots Startled Owner,” “Sadr City,” and “Louis L’Amour” show his ability to make humour, solitude, and moral ambiguity coexist. Dark Horses is not a greatest-hits collection so much as an artist-curated reinterpretation of his own work—an intimate look at three decades of songs, reduced to their narrative and melodic essentials.