FM4 Favorite Songs with Ben Howard

From Glastonbury in one form or another straight to Vienna’s Open Air Arena: a little musical talk with Ben Howard.

Written by Lisa Schneider

So what is a tour like and what is your main job? I am waiting. Waiting for the food to arrive, waiting for everyone to finish showering, waiting for the sound check to finish and the party to start and then waiting for the wait to end. By the temperatures Ben Howard sits lightly dressed in the beautifully and oddly curved backstage area of ​​Arena Vienna, providing an equally beautifully and oddly threadbare sofa as an interview seat. He says he just woke up, and he’s in his shirt, very disheveled and actually very cuddly. This is what it’s like to tour, wait and sleep.

Ben Howard released his first album twelve years ago, people talked about it in Mercury Prize circles, and then there was a long, big act. Ben Howard now plays at the Robert Albert Hall and at the Glastonbury Festival. His music is the music that might be recommended by experts like Blue Bird Festival music, it is always good slow as the heart can beat to the beat. It’s always as sad as it can be, and it’s always as understated as most good ideas among pop and folk have always been.

For his new album “Is It?” Ben Howard names Nick Cave and Neil Young as reviewers. We crossed out the two big “N’s” in our heads and after the live concert, which was a great musical summer evening, and above all because of a huge great band, we write a little Conor Oberst food for thought and of course a lot of Bon Iver.

So, in this wonderful and eccentric backstage area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe Arena Vienna, a tired Ben Howard talks about Ray LaMontagne (and says good sentences like: “He shows you how to prove a song”), about Gillian Welch, about John Francis Flynn. A little bit of fly-catching is also necessary: ​​if he, Ben Howard, has to give a very quick answer now, who better to be ahead of the best sound teams now? Even his biggest (but tiniest) small conceit looks sideways at one of his bandmates who’s occupying another couch backstage, and whispers, “Radiohead?”

We’re listening to the song “Daydream” and it’s great again, because the moon-shaped pool album is so underrated. Ben Howard may have been underestimated in some circles, but that doesn’t bother him, he has his own strength.

Favorite songs fm4

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