Mr Ben & The Bens (solo)

After countless headline tours treading the creakiest of boards in the country, cult DIY outfit and BBC 6 Music favourites Mr Ben & the Bens returned last year with the LP ‘Small Wide World’ on Bingo Records. During a brief hiatus hibernating in his Sheffield studio in an old pewter factory, band leader Ben penned the set of contemplative songs in between working as a full-time potter and illustrator. From the ‘Village Green’ era Kinks-style ‘Poor, poor me’ to the motoric ‘Listening Party’ Small Wide World is a drive through pastures new for the band. Recorded in Tesla Studios and produced by David Glover the new album inhabits a world of vintage drums machines, shimmering acoustics and wiry synthesisers. Kitchen sink realism winds its way around a set of songs jam packed with melancholic melody. ‘So Long Sympathy’ speaks of fragile ego and our means of combatting this, and ‘Penny Drop’ of the loudest voice in the room disarmed by a junior colleague, sensitive antidotes to a belligerent age.