Brandon Lancaster is confident that we’re all going to reach the hilltop — we just have to keep going. LANCO convincingly deliver that message on their new album We’re Gonna Make It, the Nashville band’s follow-up to their Number One country debut, Hallelujah Nights, and their first for Riser House Records.

“Country music has always had a lot of pain in it,” says Lancaster, who founded the multi-platinum-selling band in 2015. “When I’m writing a song, I acknowledge that pain, but I also believe in restoration and redemption, and I wanted to explore that on this record.”

Over 14 tracks, Lancaster and his bandmates — multi-instrumentalist Jared Hampton, bassist Chandler Baldwin, guitarist Tim Aven and drummer Tripp Howell — dive into all facets of the human experience as they implore listeners to keep the faith. There are candid self-portraits, relatable tales of nostalgia, and love stories (both great and otherwise), all of them built around the acoustic strum and pulsing rhythm of one of country’s most eclectic live bands.

“There’s elements of country, rock, pop, and folk and Americana all in LANCO. But it’s the authentic songwriting about our real lives where you get the LANCO sound,” Lancaster says. “With We’re Gonna Make It, we knew we had to catch fans up on our lives in an honest way. That’s part of our duty.”

They do that in songs like “We Grew Up Together,” a reflection on each member of the band becoming fathers. Lancaster thought a lot about his own parents while writing the song. “We often think our parents have it all together, but they're just people that met each other, fell in love, and then had a kid. I realized in raising my own children that we’re all learning as we go,” he says. “There's so many times that I'm trying to instill a lesson in my kids, and I’m thinking at the same time of how it applies to me.”

In “Where I Belong,” a love song about finding one’s true home, LANCO flex their signature sound, an organic mix of acoustic instruments and hard-hitting drums. “One thing we pursued on this album was our love for Americana and the stomp-clap vibe. I just love the simplicity of it,” Lancaster says. Lyrically, he and his bandmates probed more difficult questions, like what’s your purpose in life and how do you pursue it. “If you’re fortunate to find a person, that ends up being the answer to a lot of those questions.”

To record We’re Gonna Make It, LANCO reunited in the studio with Hallelujah Nights producer Jay Joyce on tracks like “Low Class Lovers,” “Sound of a Saturday Night,” & the late-night vignette “Last Call” and worked with producer Jared Conrad on newer songs like the empowering title track & looking-back anthem “Beer With Younger Me.”

The latter finds Lancaster having a conversation with a much less worldy version of himself. “If I could sit down and have a beer with younger me, I would first just listen. And then I’d tell them to not be afraid of making a wrong decision,” he says. “Because you learn from all the things you’ve done, both your mistakes and your wins.”

LANCO also take stock of the past on the gentle ballad “Million Dollar Memory.” Lancaster was ruminating on the band’s massive success with “Greatest Love Story,” a multi-week Number One country hit that helped make LANCO the first country band in a decade to have their first album debut at Number One. But along with that success came a hard-hitting reality check.

“We were not just on top of the charts, but on top of the world. We were invited to fly on private planes and all these crazy things, and then, before you know it, it’s all gone,” he says. “It was fun while it lasted, but you realize that that’s not your life — you’re just invited to have a seat at the table. In the end, we’re just simple people with simple needs, and that’s what ‘Million Dollar Memory’ is about. We don’t have a million dollars, but we can make a priceless memory with just a cheap bottle of wine by the river.”

For Lancaster, those memories often involve his wife Tiffany, who sings with her husband on the album’s reassuring closer, “Nothing You Can Do.” The song is a set of musical vows, connecting the dots of a love story that began with the album’s opening track, the rousing “We’re Gonna Make It.”

“There are two characters you are following throughout this entire record,” Lancaster says. “You've heard a little bit about her, you've heard a little bit about him, and you've heard about their friends and kids. But ultimately this album is about these two people, who are there for each other through fire and brimstone, come hell or high water.

“If we can lean into the love that we each have in our life, we can make it,” he continues. “We’re gonna make it — together.”