I walked the long way home.
Every lamp leaned inward,
wanting to see the same thing.
My shadow stayed behind for a cigarette.

Windows glowed like slow blinks.
Somewhere, a bus sighed out its passengers.
Someone laughed.
I missed the timing to join in.

Every corner felt rehearsed.
Even my footsteps seemed borrowed.

There are two streets to every place
the one you walk,
and the one that remembers you leaving.
I take the quieter one.

A stray cat followed halfway.
We didn’t speak of it.
The pavement carried on
with its small, relentless music.

I thought about turning back.
Then I thought about thought.
Then I kept going.

There are two streets to every place.
One to go,
one to forgive.

At the corner I forgot
which life I was walking toward.
I kept going,
because what else is there to do with night?

The Quiet World

The idea of you

I Forget Where We Were

Time Is Dancing

Let's Be Still

Another Story

Bon Iver, Bon Iver

Towers

Holocene

Ben Howard returns with his 4th album, Collections From The Whiteout, produced alongside Aaron Dessner (The National). The foreboding darkness that coated Ben’s second record I Forget Where We Were and thinly veiled its follow up Noonday Dream, isn’t so evident on Collections. These are songs written from headlines scanned, or news stories scrolled past, providing inspiration for a selection of vivid narrative snapshots – the death of amateur sailor Donald Crowhurst (Crowhurst’s Meme); Russian fraudster Anna Sorokin (Sorry Kid); the man who stole and crashed a plane in Seattle (The Strange Last Flight Of Richard Russell); and the dismembered body a friend of his father found in a suitcase floating along the Thames (Finders Keepers). Alongside them, the personal anecdotes from the same scattered period living between Paris, Devon and Spain. Yussef Dayes features, as does Kate Stables (This Is The Kit), James Krivchenia (Big Thief), Kyle Keegan (Hiss Golden Messenger), and Dessner. Thomas Bartlett, St. Vincent’s go-to pianist, and Rob Moose, a long-standing arranger of strings for Bon Iver, are also present. Long-term guitarist to Ben’s band, Mickey Smith (A Blaze of Feather), remains a reassuring constant. It’s a sonic adventure that continues this nagging suggestion that Ben is one of the UK’s most inventive and naturally talented songwriters. CFTW is his latest opus, and arguably his most fully realised to date.

Time Is Dancing

BenHowardOfficial