In the age of the Instagram megastar, we need more musicians like this
Ben Howard Brixton Academy, London SW9 ★★★★★
Anyone who heard Ben Howard’s late-night guest slot on Radio 1 earlier this week would have gathered pretty quickly that the 31-year-old singer-songwriter is not your average rock star. Speaking in hushed and hesitant tones, Richmondborn Howard played music from cult American folk singer Chris Smither, avant-garde cellist Arthur Russell and Eighties experimentalists Talk Talk. Mainstream it most certainly wasn’t. Having won two Brit awards in 2013 for his hazy indie-folk, Howard has followed his musical muse down the road less travelled with admirable conviction. His third album, Noonday
Dream, released last June, was a collection of musically intricate songs that delved inwards as much as his contemporary Ed Sheeran’s songs have gone the other way and reached outwards for maximum appeal.
Yet, despite having a public profile as low key as his music, Howard remains extremely popular. His first night of a four-night residency at London’s Brixton Academy showed that there’s mileage in woozy melancholia. In a blue artist’s smock, Howard took to a stage interspersed with 10 lighting poles, giving the impression of a gig among stalagmites. We were somewhere else. Somewhere exotic.
The opener, Nica Libres at Dusk, set the tone. Slowly pulsing, the music swooned and swooped in and out of focus. The murmured lyrics were fragmentary, suggesting summer sunsets and eagles soaring in perpetual circles. Howard’s music creates a feeling of being adrift. Images of islands, coves, the sea and the moon were constantly conjured.
The nine-piece backing band, including two drummers and a string section, were intense and match-fit, having toured constantly since last summer. On songs such as What the Moon Does, their textures hypnotised. However, given the spaced-out nature of the music, I wondered what quite so many musicians were actually doing. Perhaps this was the sonic equivalent of Dolly Parton’s maxim about it costing “a lot of money to look this cheap”: it takes a lot of musicians to sound this sparse. Either way, they were often mesmeric, particularly on main set closer Murmurations.
There were things wrong with this gig: there was only one song from Howard’s popular Brit-era, whereas we got every single track from Noonday Dream; over the evening, I think I interacted more with my nearby seat attendant than Howard did with the audience; and he occasionally wore his influences too heavily. (His beloved Radiohead were in evidence everywhere, and the song Towing the Line sounded so much like a Neil Young track that I barely slept a wink post-show trying to place it. I think it’s Distant Camera, but I’m still not sure.)
There’s something reassuring about the nature of Howard’s success. He proves that you don’t have to be an onstage showboater, an Instagram megastar or indeed a critical darling. All it takes is interesting music that resonates with people, however opaque that music may be.