Listening to Ben Watt’s third solo album Fever Dream makes you feel like a human being again.
Ben Watt`s new album Fever Dream arrived in my flat hand signed by the artist himself. Fever Dream is his second album in a row. Counting the early bird, North Marine Drive, issued 1983 on the prospering British independent record label Cherry Red Records, it’s actually his third solo record. I have to admit, there’s a solid bond in my heart: I love Ben Watt`s songs, his music and his voice since the days at the beginning of the 1980s. I feel a strong connection with everything he created with his wife and mother of three children, the wonderful singer, songwriter and author Tracey Thorn in Everything But The Girl, from the mid-1980s way deep down to the end of the 1990s.
Two years ago after a longer break, Ben Watt released a new album called Hendra. I was glad to have him back with such a fine, delicate, sensitive record. And now, there’s Fever Dream. Immediately, from the first bars and guitar sounds of the opening song Gradually to the end of Side A, it made me feel like a human being again. In these troubled and turbulent times, in the horrible, destructive acceleration of the digital age and the whole nerve wrecking, mind blowing internet and smartphone madness of our times, Fever Dream ignites a notion, what life, what being a human still can, still should be. Till New Year of Grace, the fine last song on Side B featuring Marissa Nadler (vocals), Fever Dream offers not only beautiful, but deeply touching songs, beautiful melodies and well-crafted lyrics of a distinctive literary quality.
They are all beautifully sung and magnificently played by Ben Watt (electric and acoustic guitars, keyboards) and his small combo of musicians, comprising of Bernhard Butler (electric guitar), Rex Horan (bass), Martin Ditchham (drums, percussion) and some more. But Fever Dream offers still more. It offers faith in life with all its ups and downs and tribulations. It offers hope and a place where you can step aside and breathe and think and feel. Fever Dream makes you feel alive again.
Ben Watt Fever Dream, Unmade Road Records, 2016