You know, it really is crazy to think that it’s already been two years since I originally tipped Ben Howard on this blog as one to watch, and I’m still eagerly awaiting the drop of his debut LP (due out in just a few months).
In the meantime, while we wait, here are a few videos that Ben’s recently released. First off, here’s a video of Ben performing his tune, “London” on a houseboat cruising the river Thames. Just because, y’know, we can…
And secondly, the brand new (well, released last month) video for Ben’s song “Wolves”, which two years ago I called “sheer perfection”.
The music blogging gig is a weird thing… you can go months without hearing anything that inspires you, and then all of a sudden a whole host of tunes reach out and smack you across the face in a course of a week. This has been one of those weeks.
Today, following a link posted in Jason Mraz’s twitter account (not actually run by Jason, but you know what I mean), I headed across to listen to some of Ben Howard‘s tunes… and immediately spent 20 minutes clicking “play”, again and again.
Ben hails from Devon, in the United Kingdom, and considering his style of playing and musical influences (John Martyn, Jeff Buckley, Joni Mitchell, Ray Lamontagne, Damien Rice, Jose Gonsalez, Bon Iver), I was surprised I hadn’t stumbled across his stuff before… as really, that sounds like a typical afternoon on my iPod.
Ben has that percussive style of guitar playing that’s seen in some of my favourite guitarists mentioned on here before, such as Andy McKee, Guy Buttery, Xavier Rudd and Kaki King. After a bit of surfing, I came across a video – which I’ve embedded below – of Ben playing a live set featuring the song, “Empty Corridors”, that is simply amazing…
Quite frankly, I’m putting Ben Howard on my “Surely Going To Make It” list. And that brings me to the real reason for this post: I’m sending you towards his myspace page to listen to the opening track there, entitled “The Wolves”. If “The Wolves” isn’t enough to convince you of this kid’s future, then I’m not sure what will. From that opening “Ooooh”, it’s sheer perfection.
