Hoboken, NJ genre-fluid Suit of Lights shares “The Empty Vault,” its first new music since 2020. “’The Empty Vault’ is a meditation on the 1938 suicide of socialite and aspiring actor Dorothy Hale,” explains  Suit of Lights principal songwriter Joe Darone, who handles vocals, keys, bass, and programming duties on the track.  On “The Empty Vault,” Suit of Lights evokes a surreal and cinematic experience with first-person dialogue, flashbacks, visual details, and theatrical cues. “Failure is often more interesting than success. I was fascinated by her story and the famous painting by Frida Kahlo,” Joe continues.

The seemingly idiosyncratic musical influences on “The Empty Vault” come from Joe and bandmate Arun Venkatesh’s Armenian and Indian family roots.

“The original demo for ‘The Empty Vault’ was like a straight rock take on Armenian folk music,”  Joe explains. “Arun essentially dismantled it and when he put it back together, it had more of an Indian flavor. The end result is far more interesting and we both think this is one of our best collaborations.”

The B-side to “The Empty Vault” is “Disintegration,” a song that survived the now-abandoned orchestral album project that Darone started during the pandemic. “I was trying to break my usual songwriting routine, and I always heard a bit of orchestration in my songs. Disintegration worked really well with a pared-down string arrangement,” Joe explains.

Named after the traditional bullfighting costumes “Traje de Luces,” Joe Darone and Arun Venkatesh consider Suit of Lights a metaphor for life’s juxtaposition of beauty and brutality and reflects that worldview throughout their music.