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Album Review
by SashaS
6-11-2001
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| 'Spoonface' |
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Ben Christophers: 'Spoonface'
(V2)
Ben Christophers’s second album hits sites more successful songwriters are still not targeting
There are several emerging artists in this country in the best songwriting tradition: Ed Harcourt, Matthew Jay, James Walsh (obscured by the Starsailor banner) and David Kitt, to name the obvious ones, but before all of them came – Ben Christophers. What this lot have in common is their inspirational interest in Tim Buckley, Nick Drake and other notable songsmiths of the pained male pysche.
Whereas Starsailor tend to follow the blueprint in solid, roadworthy melodious indie pop-rock, Christophers takes the opposite route by following the papa Buckley template of being eclectic. (What a lot of people forget is that Buckley senior used to make albums so diverse that could put an unprepared listener in a temporary psychosis.) Christophers is not yet exploring soul, rock-out or country, it is easy to imagine him reaching for different genres very shortly.
‘Spoonface’ (more of a Cap. Beefheart title than Buckley-ism but who is complaining?) is an album that takes sudden turns out of its songcraft to embrace noises, hiss, programed rhythms and stellar-like orchestration. The outer-cosmic ‘Falls Into View’ is followed by a mutated dance-pace of ‘Transatlantic Shooting Stars’ and urbanity of several other tracks.
Following the directness of ‘Leaving My Sorrow‘, there is the ethereal ‘The Stream’, the ‘funky’ ‘Hooded Kiss’, the intricate and disarming ‘Easter Park’, spacious melodies topped with Ben’s striking falsetto. And, counterbalanced with unusual sonic details to complete a picture that is truly amazing, alike in ‘Songbird Scrapes The Sky’. And then the other-wordiness of the title track slaps you in the face with its stark beauty.
At times a tad too precious but there is an almost classical sense of stillness, an aura of timelessness and poignancy that, coupled with entrancing lyrical imagery, is delivered in a morning-mist voice. Closing with the epic-proportioned ‘The Opium Willows’, ‘Spoonface’ continually surprises and keeps one’s concentration captured by being an utterly sensuous listening.
Ben Christophers’s work is ‘poesy in sound’. Go get rapt and enriched.
8.7/10
SashaS
6-11-2001
Ben Christophers’s album ‘Spoonface’ is out now on V2
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