In March 2022, Ben Howard was sat in his garden when he found himself unable to think clearly, form sentences or speak for almost an hour. A month later, after the same thing happened again, the Ivor Novello Award-winning singer-songwriter learned he’d suffered two TIAs (transient ischemic attacks – known as mini-strokes). “It was out of the blue,” says the 35 year-old. “It was a confusing time.”
I also may say, as someone whose loved one was with them when having TIAs, it must have been pretty terrifying as well!
Hospital tests proved inconclusive so, three months later, he was back in the Le Manoir de Léon studio where he’d previously recorded his acclaimed third album ‘Noonday Dream’.
The exhausting process, made worse by the aircon breaking down in a heatwave, of intense concentration and recording gave birth to his latest much anticipated album ‘Is It’.
‘Is It’ is lush, sonically splintered album which captures Howard working through those moments of seismic shift. “I found it impossible not to dwell on the absurdity of it, that with one tiny clot, one can lose all faculties. It really ate into the writing of the record”.
Yet with each listen it feels like more than that. A characteristically onion-layered record which rankles like a series of questions, or a series of vignettes throughout Howard´s life, perhaps best distilled in the whirling chorus on ´Spirit´.
‘What’s mine anyway?
My feelings seem to be arranged.
What´s mine anyway?
Spirit? Is it?´
‘Is It’ stands quite starkly on its own, buoyed by the circumstances of its creation. “Just to be playing music in the studio felt like a real privilege and a luxury,” says Howard.
On 17th October the Ben Howard I Forget Where We Were: 10th Anniversary Tour rolls into Brighton Centre and I couldn’t recommend you book tickets more.
The tour marks the first time Ben has revisited an album retrospectively, and will perform it through in its entirety. Fans can also expect live performances of songs from around the album’s initial release, including b-sides and rarities.
Arriving in 2014, and following the overwhelming triumph of Ben’s debut LP, ‘Every Kingdom’, ‘I Forget Where We Were’ signalled almost a complete volte-face in sound and temperament. Where the charts were overwhelmingly welcoming acoustic instruments and a purity that Every Kingdom managed to encapsulate beautifully, I Forget Where We Were signalled the stark arrival something far stormier and shrouded in darkness and atmosphere.
As an artist who rarely gives much time to looking back, I Forget Where We Were was a landmark moment in Ben’s career that first opened the door to an uncompromising spirit that has since stood him so well, and news of this anniversary tour should be greeted with the same dizzying levels of euphoria amongst his fanbase as those five minutes of euphoria that washed across the Royal Albert Hall last June.
Thursday 17th October 2024 Doors 1830
Brighton Centre, Kings
