Ben Howard

Ben Howard emerged as a mercurial British singer/songwriter who first attracted notice, in tandem with peers such as Benjamin Francis Leftwich and James Vincent McMorrow, through the 2011 LP Every Kingdom. Although his expressive vocals and precise guitar technique initially reflected the 1970s British folk tradition, albums such as 2018’s Noonday Dream, 2021’s Collections from the Whiteout, and 2023’s Is It? later embraced contemporary pop textures and thereby functioned as experimental landmarks.

London-born in 1987, Howard spent his formative years in South Devon, where his mother’s folk-record collection cultivated an affinity for Joni Mitchell, Donovan, and Richie Havens. He also cultivated a passion for surfing and briefly relocated to Newquay, the United Kingdom’s surf capital, earning academic credit for employment at a surfing magazine. Six months before graduation, however, Howard left school, persuaded by the surf community’s warm reception of his music—which, despite its acoustic-folk character and coastal atmosphere, echoed John Martyn more than Jack Johnson—and chose to concentrate on songwriting.

That same surf community served as an early catalyst, enabling Howard to perform before capacity crowds well before his recordings traveled beyond British beaches. A late-2008 European tour supporting Xavier Rudd broadened his reach, as did the EPs These Waters and Old Pine. Upon completing his debut full-length Every Kingdom in 2011, he had secured a major-label contract with Island Records—the same imprint once home to Martyn—and advanced to headline status through the 2012 Burgh Island EP and expanding followings in England, Germany, France, and Holland. Every Kingdom became a breakthrough in the United Kingdom, securing a Mercury Prize nomination, two BRIT Awards for British Breakthrough Act and British Solo Male Artist, and eventual platinum certification.

For the eagerly awaited follow-up I Forget Where We Were, Howard adopted a more electric orientation, earning favorable notices and commercial traction when the album entered the U.K. charts at number one. In spring 2017 he joined a collaborative endeavor with Mickey Smith, India Bourne, and additional musicians; the enigmatic sextet A Blaze of Feather performed at prominent U.K. festivals that year and issued a self-titled album several months afterward. Early 2018 brought word of Howard’s third studio album, heralded by the dreamy seven-minute track “A Boat to an Island on the Wall,” with Noonday Dream appearing that June. September yielded a characteristically introspective, standalone triple A-side comprising “Another Friday Night,” “Hot Heavy Summer,” and the experimental “Sister.”

Although the ethereal January 2019 single “Heave Ho” connected Noonday Dream to his subsequent long-player, two more years elapsed before new material arrived. During a summer 2019 drive through Portugal, Howard encountered the expansive, loop-driven sounds of Aaron Dessner’s PEOPLE collective and resolved to collaborate with the National co-founder. Consequently, sessions for 2021’s Collections from the Whiteout unfolded across New York, Paris, and Devon before wrapping at Howard’s adopted residence on Ibiza. A limited-edition vinyl reissue of the 2012 EP Burgh Island appeared in 2022. The following year he released the lush, layered Is It?, an album that partly addressed the emotional aftermath of mini-strokes he had endured the previous year.