After a while away, you might think some may have mislaid the quiet influence of Devon’s finest son. His progression from surfer dude to still young but not so old statesman of singer songwriting has been more than interesting, since with each release, his sound matures, gains ground, starts to stretch away from the erstwhile competition. It seems very much like he is in a class of his own, where the better the songs become, the more removed he is from the mainstream roots of musical society. This, in itself, is a very good thing indeed.
Moving even further out into the swell from the experimental expansiveness of ‘I Forget Where We Were’ , this new exploration finds Ben seeking out fresh methods to convey the ineffable essence of life, love, loss and bleary-eyed wonderment. This reviewer is reminded more than anything of the developmental process undertaken by Talk Talk between The Colour of Spring and Spirit of Eden: a process that freed itself from the shackles of major label prosperity to the possible prospect of an ignominious exit from the charts. In this instance, there is no need to worry. Like Talk Talk, Mr Howard knows how to build an atmosphere, an insistent mood which hooks the listener almost instantly whilst sounding both accessible and ethereal, mystical even, at the very same time.
I’ll be honest, it took 3 spins of this very CD to completely convince my ears. After that, there is no return to forever, only rejoicing in the now, the multiple layers of crystalline beauty, the gently plangent chord progressions, the feelings flowing gently in all directions, yet resplendent with muscular and dynamic chord progressions, softly shifting drum patterns spiralling up and down, into and out of the earth’s crust, gazing into deep blue waters. And that’s just track one.
The song titles are more like paintings : ‘ Nica Libres at Dusk’, ‘A Boat to an Island on the Wall’ and ‘Murmurations’ to name but three. All of these breathtakingly beautiful songs take shape and then expand, layering their emotions subtly yet with insistence. The poetry is in the motion, some parts rock out in reverb and a riot of riffs and light bulb ideas. ‘Boat to an Island’ is a case in point – it builds and builds until it cannot be contained, letting loose from the anchor, like it could be the soundtrack to Wordsworth’s Prelude. It’s that seductive, passionate, scared and rejoicing in possibility. Mood boards abound, filigrees of light, shafts of chords alive with warmth and honesty.
As I listen now to ‘ What the Moon Does’ , it’s akin to being swept into a trance, wanting more, viewing the ‘broken wings on a butterfly’, the guitars ringing like bells around your cranium and all you want to do now is DIVE, DIVE, DIVE into the blue, absorb the sky, ingest the earth, let nature and love and beauty take hold. How can mere music be this transformational, this blindingly spiritual, like a sweet series of mini-explosions, distilling its influences into a maelstrom of echoes, slow motion galloping across heather-beaten heaths : ’someone in the doorway, someone in the light.’ These words set against the rich tapestry of meta-funk, string arrangments, riffs on whalesong, repeated mini-chants, an irrepressible, ever-enveloping noise of blues, yellows, greens and mutating rainbows.
This is the album as concept, striving for a place beyond mere mortality with no fussy track skipping, no chance to step away, step back, escape its embrace, again just like Talk Talk. It moves the listener to rejoice in the mass of detail, the perfect imperfections, the fact that BEAUTY LIKE THIS may seem somehow impossible. His voice seems to do little, yet it reverberates, a ghostly accompaniment to the array of skilfully assembled instrumentation. Each listen repays with more depth, more everything; leaving nothing to chance at all.
There is seemingly no point in naming more tracks. The fact that every moment here could stand alongside Talk Talk’s canon is enough. This is beauty, this is for you, so rejoice, understand that beauty is soul deep, it runs hard into eternity, since you will want to ingest this until you have no breath left to draw from. This is the sound Lazurus might hear on awakening and he cannot ever go back to sleep again for fear of missing out on this, this elemental source, this impression of the start and end of everything.
Ben Howard is creating a canon of his own, a back catalogue of quite stunning musical magic, something so phenomenal and life-affirming. It’s your turn to investigate and add to your own dreams.
HUGH OGILVIE.
