Ben Watt – Storm Damage (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 44:29 minutes | 507 MB | Genre: Indie Pop, Pop Rock, Singer-Songwriter
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Caroline International (S&D)
Across four decades Ben Watt has maintained a committed forward-looking course, from the ardent echo-drenched folk of his early solo work with Robert Wyatt, through seventeen years as musical mainspring and co-lyricist in the best-selling Everything But the Girl with Tracey Thorn – and ten at the helm of his smart electronic label Buzzin’ Fly – to his more recent moving non-fiction and mid-life solo albums, the award-winning ‘Hendra’ (2014) and ‘Fever Dream’ (2016). ‘Storm Damage’ is Watt’s fourth solo LP. Sonically adventurous, lyrically detailed and engaged, the album – written and produced by Watt himself – is a personal journey through anxiety and change cut through with an insistent defiance.
Like Fever Dream before it, Storm Damage was born of personal anguish — it was written after the loss of Ben Watt’s half-brother and in the midst of the sociopolitical turmoil of the late 2010s — but the album sounds and feels different than its predecessor. Chalk that up to Watt’s decision to create Storm Damage with what he calls “a future-retro trio,” a combo consisting of a piano, double bass, and drums, supplemented by various synths and found sounds. The result is a hushed yet an intense affair, an album whose conflicted emotions are apparent but presented in a fashion that’s so subdued, it’s nearly soothing. The soft, subtle tension between the deeply felt songs and the smooth, sophistication of the execution is quite rewarding, since the album can alternately play like a plea or a balm, depending on mood or timing. – Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Tracklist:
01. Balanced On A Wire
02. Summer Ghosts
03. Retreat To Find
04. Figures In The Landscape
05. Knife In The Drawer
06. Irene
07. Sunlight Follows The Night
08. Hand
09. You’ve Changed, I’ve Changed
10. Festival Song
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