Phillip Island troubadour Mark Howard drags his suitcase of songs back into the light with Deep Dark Blue, his most daring and immersive record yet. It’s atmospheric and raw, where the instrumentation moves like currents in the dark, and the storytelling surfaces like forgotten relics. These songs are born from the long nights and the endless highways, the bruises and the small salvations picked up along the way.

After the ghosts and triumphs of his debut Passing Strangers, Howard wandered stages across Australia, New Zealand and the UK, gathering scars, stories and momentum enough to fuel this new chapter. Deep Dark Blue isn’t just a collection of songs, it’s a reckoning, a confession booth in the dark, wrestling with the shadows we carry and the strange kind of peace that comes when you finally sit with them.