Album Review: Ben Howard — consequenceofsound.net

“Has the world gone mad/ Or is it me?” is a question posed by British troubadour Ben Howard on “Small Things”, the deceptively bleak opening track to his second album, I Forget Where We Were. It sets a rhetorical tone for a collection of 10 reflective songs that contemplate the pain of love, the restless spirit, and the disquieting sense of falling short. Along the way, Howard externalizes a kind of inner madness while his imagery remains suitably poetic. (The title track stands out for mixing domestic metaphors with the change of season.) It’s not simply the exorcism that Howard puts himself through, but rather the feeling that he has come out of the process stronger.

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