Just before long-awaited third album Get Found, which you can preorder now before Friday 7 April 2017, Ben Marwood has revealed the lyric video's ultimate form for new song 'The Devil Makes Work For Jazz Hands'. Watch it below.
'The Devil Makes Work For Jazz Hands' dips into the determination it took to make the album a reality.
Driven by the stripped back approach that helped make Ben's debut album Outside There's A Curse such a favourite, the song speaks of death, and hints at the struggles that kept Ben out of action for a year. Ultimately the song is redemptive, with Ben singing “you should know that you can't fear all the things you feel in the dark”.
In satirising the lyric video – from drum clicks to choruses, and glitches to reboot via loading screens for extra drum fills and self-worth – it transposes more meaning from the song than your average attempt at teaching you a song's words.
Ben, Non Canon and Helen Chambers tour the UK in April. Read an interview between the two XMR artists Ben Marwood and Non Canon here. Grab tickets for tour dates here.
APRIL
06 Brighton @ Brunswick
07 London @ The Monarch
08 Portsmouth @ Southsea Sound
10 Bristol @ Crofters Rights
11 Nottingham @ Bodega
12 York @ Fulford Arms
14 Edinburgh @ Opium
15 Glasgow @ Hug & Pint
16 Manchester @ Gullivers
Get Found has been a long time in the making. After the successes of debut album Outside There’s A Curse (2011) and the follow-up Back Down (2013) – which include a sold out solo headline UK tour; a support run with Frank Turner across the US, and the very surreal spectacle of accompanying Mr Turner upon rolling green hills at his pre-show performance of the London 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony - Ben wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to or even want to play music again.
A very intense year-long illness stopped Ben in his tracks and even though 2014-2015 was a surprisingly productive year of writing new songs, life continued to intervene, and this promising musician spent a year “embracing horizontal living”.
A third album was anything but inevitable at that point. Yet here we are, in 2017, warmly welcoming another Ben Marwood record. The album doesn’t stray far from its roots but plays with them tenderly. Pedal steel aches on ‘Enraptured’, while ‘DNFTTTS’ is pure andante piano melody. ‘Nights’ chugs and spits before bellowing into the most uplifting-sounding chorus about death you’ve heard yet – and there are plenty to come. “I’m not dead, I’m not dying, I just can’t get up,” confesses Ben on ‘I’m Wide Awake It’s Boring’ as one of just two songs that directly reference his mental and physical state of that difficult year. But Ben’s still able to pull his best from just his familiar flowing fingerstyle and disarmingly affecting voice on ‘Bones’ and ‘Bury Me In the Pantheon’.
Confessional and demanding of attention – it’s great to have Ben Marwood back.