Storm Damage Ben Watt

• 1 Balanced On A Wire 03:48
• 2 Summer Ghosts 05:00
• 3 Retreat To Find 04:36
• 4 Figures In The Landscape 04:06
• 5 Knife In The Drawer 04:20
• 6 Irene 06:32
• 7 Sunlight Follows The Night 02:57
• 8 Hand 03:36
• 9 You’ve Changed, I’ve Changed 03:59
• 10 Festival Song 05:38
• Total Runtime 44:32

Info for Storm Damage

Completing a compelling trilogy of albums since his late-flowering return to solo songwriting and singing six years ago, Ben Watt releases his fourth LP, Storm Damage, and with it a new sound and fervency.

"I needed a fresh approach," says Watt, 56. "The album came out of an intense period of personal anguish and political anger. Sometimes repeating yourself musically feels disrespectful to the sharpness of your feelings. You have to search for a new way to capture the energy."

Across four decades Watt has maintained a committed forward-looking course, from the ardent echo-drenched folk of his early solo work with Robert Wyatt, through seventeen years as musical mainspring and co-lyricist in the best-selling Everything But The Girl with Tracey Thorn - and ten at the helm of his smart electronic label Buzzin' Fly - to his recent moving non-fiction and mid-life solo albums, the award-winning Hendra (2014) and Fever Dream (2016).

New album Storm Damage is no exception. Sonically adventurous, lyrically detailed and engaged, the album - written and produced by Watt - is a personal journey through anxiety and change cut through with an insistent defiance.

Sonically the album forgoes the acclaimed twin-guitar approach of its two predecessors, and boldly shifts focus onto - in Watt's words - "a future-retro trio" of upright piano, double bass and hybrid acoustic-electronic drums, set against a half-lit backdrop of lone analogue synths, spiralling echo spins and impressionistic 'found sounds' adapted from online public-domain recording archives. Low's Alan Sparhawk makes a guest appearance on electric guitar and harmony vocal.

Emotional and inventive, Storm Damage is released on Unmade Road through Caroline International.

Ben Watt

Ben Watt
Best known as half of Everything But The Girl, the singer-songwriter adds to his acclaimed solo work with sonically adventurous new album Storm Damage.

Across four decades Ben Watt has maintained a committed forward-looking course, from the ardent echo-drenched folk of his early solo work with Robert Wyatt.

Storm Damage is no exception. The album – written and produced by Watt – is a personal journey through anxiety and change cut through with an insistent defiance.

After 17 years as musical mainspring and co-lyricist in the bestselling Everything But The Girl with Tracey Thorn, Watt spent ten years at the helm of his smart electronic label Buzzin' Fly and authored two moving non-fiction works, Patient and Romany and Tom.

He went on to write two mid-life solo albums: 2014’s award-winning Hendra was followed two years later by Fever Dream.

Storm Damage forgoes the acclaimed twin-guitar approach of its two predecessors, and boldly shifts focus onto – in Watt's words – ‘a future-retro trio’ of upright piano, double bass and hybrid acoustic-electronic drums.

The instruments are set against a half-lit backdrop of lone analogue synths, spiralling echo spins and impressionistic found sounds adapted from online public-domain recording archives.

‘I wanted a timeless-meets-modern live jam – the directness of an adorned trio capturing the spirit; and the samples, synthetics and electronic boom capturing the psychological mood,’ he says. ‘Tight, but allowed to slip its moorings.’

Expect songs, improvisation and stories from across his career as Watt performs with his current band.

This album contains no booklet.