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“We're all trying to find stories and tales that interlink with our own feelings and our own capacity,” Ben Howard tells Apple Music about his fourth studio LP. “I've always felt I've been a little misguided in trying to explain the time that I live in, but you're supposed to; you're trying to explain yourself in these little moment.” The British singer-songwriter became obsessed with, in his own word, “the heroes and villains of our time” as he brought life to them—whether it's the mysterious death of British businessman and amateur sailor Donald Crowhurst (“Crowhurst's Meme”) or the 2018 Horizon Air incident involving a ground service agent who hijacked a commercial plane and crashed (“The Strange Last Flight of Richard Russell”). Working with an outside producer for the first time (The National's Aaron Dessner), Howard invited a broad range of collaborators (This Is the Kit's Kate Stable, multi-instrumentalist Rob Moose, St. Vincent pianist Thomas Bartlett) to help flesh out his hypnotic blend of ambient folk and electronic flourishe. Here, Howard takes us through a few of the album's key song. <b>What a Day</b> “It's loosely based on a walk in the countryside with an old friend of mine. We were talking clumsily about existentialism and had a great sort of pain that hung between u, and that's really what the song was born from. I'd always come back to that imagery of the British countryside. It was a really crisp blue sky that only those really remote parts of the world have, when it's blindingly white. Ultimately, that's what the imagery is based on. I suppose it does document a relationship in a gentle way.” <b>Finders Keepers</b> “I love the idea that things at any one time can mean multiple thing, even something as physical as a suitcase. The story is a very one-dimensional one of a guy following a suitcase down the river. But it's almost about what that suitcase represents for him, and the importance of that thing. It was just one of those where I was playing a lot of guitar through Moog pedals and stuff, and found a really cool lost corner of delays and arpeggiator. This story and this guitar part are married quite nicely at the time, and it gave it the strangeness that the story really i.” <b>Sorry Kid</b> .

via Apple Music

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