Ben Howard
Burgh Island


4.0
excellent

Review

by nakedmolerat USER (11 Reviews)
December 16th, 2014 | 12 replies


Release Date: 2012 | Tracklist

Review Summary: The diverging road, it begins here.

Ben Howard is, perhaps, still a fresh face in the folk scene. The dichotomy between his debut and sophomore releases has been the subject of some journalistic scrutiny, hailed as the bold and drastic artistic advent of a singer-songwriter whose career has barely seen 3 years in the limelight. The Burgh Island EP, a largely uncovered gem nestled between the two full-lengths, has thus gone understandably unnoticed. its a damn shame, really.

Every Kingdom played like a train chugging along steadily, borne aloft by Howard's vigorous finger picking and the wooden patter of acoustic drums. The album had a strong forward impetus, particularly obvious in more upbeat tracks like "The Wolves" and "Keep Your Head Up", but evident even in quieter offerings like "Everything". This inability to sit still gave Every Kingdom vibrancy and life, and was one of its most defining factors. Its absence, therefore, is perhaps the most palpable difference between Burgh Island and everything that came before.

This difference is more nuanced than merely that between the upbeat and the dour. While Every Kingdom had you traveling places with its music, Burgh Island causes you just to stay put and let the melancholy descend. If his earlier works were adventures through his external influences, Burgh Island is Howard leading us down a very different road - through the dark recesses of his very private, personal internal thoughts. Opener Esmeralda severs his ties with optimism, as clouds gather while Howard recounts a dark tale over flecks of uncanny chords - the prelude to the journey he's about to take. When drums coming in deep and pounding with an unnerving baseline, his musings culminate in a proclamation of "now I'm going places on my own". His newfound solidarity is reiterated in the opening lines of To Be Alone, as Howard murmurs "I don't need nobody to be alone" in a low growl as if he's sweating out a fever - the very image he describes later in the track.

Ben Howard earns his stripes as an artist not with his aptitude at the acoustic, nor his crooning affected voice, but with his penchant for storytelling. He writes his music and melodies to describe an image, a scene, and his lyrics work toward the same end. Neither are subservient to the other. Oats in the Water plays like the foreshadowing of a disaster, as Howard warns "you'll find loss, and you'll fear what you found" and “things you never asked her, oh how they tear at you now”, describing a relationship on the brink of an end, and accentuating his despair with a solo that rips and tears at the seams. It hits hard - yet leaves you with the feeling that mores to come. The respite that comes but 2 tracks later in the form of Burgh Island therefore seems unexpected and a tad abrupt. Nevertheless, Howard's wistful description "in sepia tones" of a place and a lover long gone, over the pulsating heartbeat of reverb and a duet with a ghost of the past, brings the EP to a beautiful close. It still begs the question, though – what was the point of all this?

Burgh Island didn't make much sense to me on first listen - it struck me as a novel effort by Howard in an interesting direction, but something too complicated or too peculiar to pay attention to. But when the opening chords of "Small Things" brought a deep despondency that somehow felt so familiar, the pieces began to fall into place. When Howard laments "has the world gone mad, or is it me?", it feels like we're beginning I Forget Where We Were by joining him in despair that he's sat in for some time, and it is Burgh Island that began this hitchhike into hopelessness.

Burgh Island is the darker, rougher foreword to I Forget Where We Were - less sad, but more forceful. The latter album even seems to allude to the themes of the EP at points - the loneliness of "In Dreams" and "Time is Dancing", the taste of death in "Evergreen". “End of the Affair” is perhaps the most direct continuation of Howard’s expository in Burgh Island, where Howard murmurs “do I care, do I care, the thunder’s rumbled sound” while desolated by a loss of love, before breaking off into a solo and jam with the intensity of a storm, broken up only by his feral roars that sound in the silence like thunderclaps – the exact image he conjured up for Burgh Island’s album art. It feels like the foreshadowing in Oats in the Water finally finds itself fulfilled both sonically and thematically in "End of the Affair", which burns slower but with far more devastating effects.

The Burgh Island EP is the missing link between where Ben Howard was once and where he is now. It provides us a springboard to leap off before the plummet into the depths, and rather than detracting from his change of direction, Burgh Island accentuates the effect, and is, in my humble opinion, quite essential to the Ben Howard experience.



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user ratings (119)
4
excellent


Comments:Add a Comment 
mitch91
December 16th 2014


420 Comments

Album Rating: 4.0

Excellent review, I agree wholeheartedly.

Rowan5215
Emeritus
December 17th 2014


48024 Comments

Album Rating: 3.8

"where Ben Howard was once and where he is now"

pun intended?

either way top-marks for review and Esmeralda is the best ever

nakedmolerat
December 19th 2014


22 Comments

Album Rating: 4.0

I tried hahah. Thanks guys it's been awhile.



SCREAM!
August 27th 2016


15755 Comments


Just heard Oats in the Water and I need this

Rowan5215
Emeritus
August 27th 2016


48024 Comments

Album Rating: 3.8

check London from his first EP man

Dewinged
Staff Reviewer
February 28th 2017


32209 Comments


Miss this chap, and what he did in this album.

NorthernSkylark
March 22nd 2019


12134 Comments

Album Rating: 4.5

ok this rules

Dewinged
Staff Reviewer
March 23rd 2019


32209 Comments


Surprised how little action this one got. These songs are among his best.

BlushfulHippocrene
Staff Reviewer
November 28th 2019


4053 Comments

Album Rating: 3.5

Esmeralda has been on repeat.

Observer
Emeritus
December 12th 2019


9471 Comments


finally

Kroehny
April 3rd 2021


47 Comments

Album Rating: 5.0

This and IFWWW was the peak of Ben Howard’s guitar playing, which is virtually non-existent on the new one...

Aerisavion
October 1st 2021


3160 Comments

Album Rating: 4.5

You forget how goddamn good 'Oats in the Water' is and then relisten to it and fuck.



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