Ben Howard – ‘Is It?’ album review: perfect summer bliss
There are albums that pine for you to pore over their postmodernist lyrics, others that beg you to be bewildered trying to breakdown their dazzling musicology, and a rarified kind that simply dig out the deck chair, blast out some bliss for you to bask in and ask for nothing in return other than the occasional contented utterance of, ‘Well, isn’t this nice?’ Ben Howard’s Is It? is certainly the latter, but what truly makes it a summer masterpiece is that in time you’ll likely come to realise it has elements of all three.
It is a record at one with itself, clear in its intent to be a ray of sunshine and reconciliation. That much is asserted by welcoming you in with the open arms of the most obvious single ‘Couldn’t Make It Up’. Within a few bars of that beauteous opener Howard extolls the sentiment of the album, singing: “Sitting in the garden listening to the radio.” That is exactly how Is It? will likely be devoured by many as it blossoms into the summer hit it was effortlessly born to be.
This fresh jazzy sound is resplendent throughout the album as the 10 tracks create a singular flow of chronicled variations akin to a stroll through a golden baked citadel, bathing in all the sights as you waltz along, wrapped up in headphones, nourished by the niceties of nature in bloom. That’s the very image he dwells on in ‘Days of Lantana’ as Howard reflects on the happiness he has harnessed.
It’s quite a beautiful thing to behold and it brilliantly conjures a similar response in the listener. As Howard croons about time being precious, you purvey the beatitude woven into the textured music with all the more gratitude. In an era where so many people seem to be keen to make a point, this sense of tranquility and earnest appreciation in the tunes makes the album important by virtue of not trying to be important. It is a serving of sonic shandy in the sunshine that asks you to sit down, take pause and realise the value of contentedness.
With that sentiment served up, Is It? seems like a big album for Ben Howard. It sees him enter a new chapter – more bassy and rhythmic than anything he has done before – buoyed by a sense of artistic liberation that allows him to venture onwards and upwards with assuredness. This is imbued upon the record by the startling moment that inspired it when Howard had a stroke.
”I found it impossible not to dwell on the absurdity of it, that with one tiny clot, one can lose all faculties. It really ate into the writing of the record,” he says. This adds a layer of poignancy to the album’s urge for the listener to recognise the good times ala Kurt Vonnegut’s famed line: ”Enjoy the little things in life because one day you’ll look back and realise they were the big things.” It is a record of reflection and recovery, and it is a triumph.
It is also a huge album for the producer Nathan Jenkins known professionally as Bullion. It continues the signature sound he achieved on Orlando Weeks’ masterful Hop Up, and establishes him as the greatest purveyor of upbeat bliss in the production game right now, essentially claiming the hallmark of indie summer sounds.
That sound plays out like a mirage throughout the wavering album that is littered with Margarita-sipping hits and the occasional experimental collage like ‘Total Eclipse’. The album was recorded by Howard and his band during a ten day creative splurge at the Le Manoir de Léon studios, nestled in the hilly bosom between Bordeaux and Biarritz, in the South of France. It perfectly relays that vignette musically in a steady flow of seamless melodic joy, so if that doesn’t sound like your cup of tea then c’est la vie, but for everyone else, the soundtrack of your Summer 2023 has arrived.
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