Sometimes, I am the last one to know about the popularity of an artist, as I go to Amoeba to see Ben Howard about 30 minutes in advance and expect to be front row because, you now, I had never heard of the guy,… I am dead wrong for half of the cases, as I was for Howard, and what an unexpected large crowd! I should have known better, his show at the Troubadour has sold out so fast he had to add another one the following night, and recently the songwriter’s popularity has skyrocketed after the recent release of his album ‘Every Kingdom’.
But Ben Howard does it totally old school,… and I thought that young people were into electronics, auto-tuned vocals and DJ stuff! But no, they still like plain acoustic guitar, complicated finger picking done by a guy singing meaningful lyrics with his natural voice, who would have known?! The crowd was around him, closer to the Amoeba stage than unusual, and religiously listening to him from start to finish, like in the good old times of the birth of folk music.
‘Thanks for being so quiet’ he said mid-set, because, yeah, it was astonishingly quiet. I also had never seen so many English people at Amoeba (they have this accent, you know), and this makes totally sense because he is indeed British.
He sat down the whole time, and started by playing his guitar flat on his lap, gently and rhythmically tapping his foot on the floor. His finger picking was fluid and intricate – this guy can obviously play and isn’t faking it as some do – and his folky voice was deep and melancholic, although there was nothing very remarkable about it, I immediately thought I had heard before.
This may be the problem with his style, this has been done a million times, the sad melancholic vocals à la Nick Drake (an artist often mentioned in Howard reviews), the dramatic strumming and delicate finger picking, the complex guitar textures, the desolated and moody soundscapes first quiet then turning all thunder,… but it was sure well done, anchored in a long tradition, and the fans loved it.
Iman told me he thought Ben Howard was a Jack Johnson wannabe, and if I now see the connection, it would be more because of the surf thing than the music, seriously his voice was more Jose-Gonzales-type at times.
He had a very good contact with the crowd, making friendly conversation with many people there, and someone asked him to play Carly Rae Jepsen’s ‘Call Me Maybe’, a song he has apparently covered during a BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge.
‘I’m not going to do this song again!’ he said as if he had been caught doing something borderline sinful, ‘But it was a good cover’ replied the guy in the crowd! To clarify, Howard had reluctantly picked a popular song to cover during the BBC show, and didn’t seem to be very proud of it.
He also played a few songs, which do not figure on his album, like ‘Further Away’, and after about 20 minutes, I thought he was a real nice guy, making conversation with his adoring fans, playing these acoustic songs part quiet part agitated, with nicely complicated guitar effects and habited by his deep voice, but I was a little bored,… then he closed his set with ‘Old Pine’, a sweet harmony-filled song, exulting some old Irish folk melody, and I found it very charming.