Nothing More released Spirits on October 14, 2022, through Better Noise Music, after making an album across three states. Singer Jonny Hawkins worked from Baton Rouge, drummer Ben Anderson lived in Phoenix, and guitarist Mark Vollelunga and bassist Daniel Oliver recorded together in San Antonio. For a band accustomed to working in the same room, the separation changed how songs developed and how disagreements got resolved.
The foundations were laid before lockdown. Vollelunga told SpazioRock that he, Oliver and Anderson began working through ideas in late 2019. In a later interview with The Travel Addict, Oliver described spending about six weeks assembling instrumental arrangements before involving Hawkins. Riffs became songs with recognizable sections; once vocals entered the process, those structures could be cut apart and rebuilt around the melody and words.
After the demos, Anderson’s drums were recorded at Sonic Ranch near El Paso. Much of the remaining work happened separately, with guitars and bass tracked in Vollelunga’s garage and Hawkins recording vocals both independently and with Sahaj Ticotin. Even then, lyrics remained a group concern. Oliver recalled four- and five-way Zoom calls to revise lines during vocal sessions. A bandmate’s objection could mean another rewrite, but he believed those extra rounds improved the album.
“We had to hone our skills and file-share everything,” Vollelunga told Guitar World. That adjustment extended to the instruments themselves. Spirits included his first experience playing eight-string guitars, alongside electric ukulele, while Oliver used electric upright bass on “Déjà Vu.” Working with familiar bandmates in unfamiliar conditions also meant learning new ways to play. Vollelunga recorded with a Fractal Axe-Fx III, the same modeling equipment he used live. The garage sessions gave him and Oliver a place to explore those sounds while the larger production moved between locations.
Some ideas survived that process largely intact. Vollelunga told SpazioRock that “Don’t Look Back” began with programming Hawkins had created, much of which remained in the finished track. Elsewhere, the writing turned directly toward damaged relationships. “You Don’t Know What Love Means” addressed the exhaustion of trying to sustain a relationship when the effort runs in one direction. When introducing the single, Hawkins connected its emotional approach to earlier songs “Go to War” and “Jenny.”
That personal focus sat beside broader questions about human behavior. Hawkins described “Tired of Winning” to Billboard as a look at self-sabotage and the inability to enjoy progress when there is always someone else to envy. The album’s concerns about isolation, dependence and conflict emerged from the same period that had forced the band to rethink its working habits.
The cost was time and uncertainty. Hawkins told Billboard that remote production had added almost a year to the process. Without the regular exchange between performing and hearing from audiences, he felt they were “making an album in a vacuum.” He did not want to repeat the method, although he valued learning how to keep songs moving when the members could not be together.
The album’s later expansion documented them back in front of a crowd. Released in September 2023, Spirits (Deluxe) included performances recorded at a sold-out Irving Plaza show in New York, which the band identified as its first official live recordings. It also included a new version of “Best Times” with Lacey Sturm. After the original album’s long separation, the deluxe edition preserved the band playing those songs together with an audience in the room.
