Reviews

Kill or Cure

Having been on the folk scene in the UK and abroad for over ten years, and having played gigs all over the world, Ben is now based in Bradford, and launched his new CD Kill or Cure in Leeds. With excellent lyrics and a fantastic duet with Kate Peters on the fantastic Hold On To Your Hard Times, this is a brilliant CD.

(With) some fantastic harmonies, great guitar picking and vocal and musical arrangements that are McCartneyesque in parts, with a lyrical bite of Richard Thompson and veering from style to style, this is a stunning album and well worth investigating.

Journal of the Classic Rock Society, August 2009

Ben Walker illustrates his talented skills as a musician as he sings effortlessly on Kill or Cure. Walker also plays piano, electric guitar and bouzouki, all to a high standard, which seems flawless. Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day is a great song to put on every night before you retire for bed, as it unwinds and relaxes you. In a way, after listening to the peaceful song, I felt cleansed from my bad energies.

Vocally, Walker has a soothing and calming voice and he knows exactly how to use it to his benefit. I can definitely see a selection of songs such as God gaining airplay on radio stations such as Magic and BBC2 (sic.) Overall this is a fine piece of work Ben has put together with the help of his band.

Maverick Magazine, September 2009

Ben Walker’s sixth album consolidates his reputation as a bit of an underground star. The London-born, West Yorkshire-based songwriter has assembled a stellar bunch of musicians including Derek Nash (Eric Clapton, Jools Holland), whose playing floats above ‘Love in London’, to realize his eclectic mix of pop, rock and jazz

The melodies are wonderfully engaging, especially ‘Hold On To Your Hard Times’, featuring a strong vocal from Kate Peters, and ‘Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day’, while lyrically we’re into some dark territory. Walker deserves his shot.

R2 Magazine, September 2009

An Orphan’s Song

Ben Walker really must love Stuart Ross’s work because, unless you’re Leonard Cohen, releasing a CD of poetry set to music is a commercially risky venture, to say the least. But it’s obvious there’s much love in this collection of tunes appropriated (with a bit of editing) from four of Stu’s small-press poetry collections, with the UK-based Walker lending not only vocals but also acting as a one-man band.

Stuart often seems perplexed when people say they find some of his surreal poetry funny. Well, funny a lot of it is, and many of the poems are even funnier when set to music. “Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Ron Padgett” is pure genius. No. 1 with a silver bullet.

Taddle Creek Magazine, 2008

If You Want Love

Ben’s soft-rock sound has been recorded on what many would now consider an old-fashioned setup, but it’s still a perfectly capable one. Only one song was recorded on the Cubase system as a bit of an experiment, while the rest of the demo was recorded to ADAT.

The warm electric bass and unfussy electric guitar sounds show a production approach which leans towards the ‘live in the studio’ style of demo. Ben’s website confirms that this was what he was aiming for, and the CD has a certain charm which might have been lost had he gone for a more polished sound. Having said that, some obvious extras would improve the arrangements. For example, the second verse and bridge on the first track (If You Want Love) badly need backing vocals or some of the excellent brass playing from the third verse to lift them dynamically.

The second song (Don’t Interfere With Beauty) has an early Beatles feel, courtesy of the simple harmonica line echoing the sung melodies. It also features a slightly more animated vocal performance from Ben, and he could have capitalised on this lift in energy level with a sharper EQ on the brass. Yet as it stands, the combination of electric piano and brass creates a smoky club atmosphere that still works well

Having enjoyed the fairly under-produced sound of the band, it was interesting to hear a more complex and modern approach on the fourth track (Altitude). This incorporates a busy drum loop and sampled bass with some atmospheric keyboard work. The sound of the vocal is helped by what is obviously a better microphone than the one used on the preceding tracks, but band bassist Nick Aynsley should have been drafted in for the session — he could have provided a much better groove than the bass samples do. Overall, the recording quality is better on this fourth track but as it’s in contrast to the live and loose feel of the rest of the tracks, it comes over as a bit of an experiment.

Sound on Sound, April 2005

Bahaudin

Enigmatic hooded figure walking amongst northern mills is the image presented. The music is not so enigmatic, having at times a blues feel and at other times a soft rock feel, the whole mounted in a setting of eight very capable backing musicians. The lyrics have the feeling of angst, a traditional feeling beloved of the singer-songwriter, and one or two are amusingly quirky (‘I got room for manoeuvre/ I got space to spare/ I got dust in my hoover/ Ice in my frigidaire’)

Track 5, ‘Feel Like Gideon’, has (the narrator) not being satisfied but, unlike Gideon, he doesn’t “defeat an army, numbered like locusts, with only 300 men “. Slightly disappointing.

‘The Poisoned Heart’ hits the country and western trail but has a comforting scales-falling-from-eyes ending. This might be a religious allegory…or I missed the point, which isn’t at all unusual…proving that Ben’s songs can work on different levels, but whatever the intellectual level, it’s a good song.

The title is enigmatic also, being the name of a Sufi master (Bahaudin Naqshband, died c1389), credited with having “returned to the original principles and practices of Sufism”. I mention this as it is the title of the CD, but the CD is not suffused with Sufism, that I noticed.

All in all, a very pleasing set from this drum-and-guitar-based band, not very folky, or even acoustic, but entertaining.

Tykes News, Summer 2004

Warm and Normal

Ben Ward, a native Englishman who we first met when he showed up at a jam we were hosting, blew the socks off the audience with his provocative songs, sung accompanied only by his earnest mandolin playing.

When we met Ward he was a student on vacation who was becoming increasingly reluctant to go home. The way people responded to his material, and meeting people he came to care about, worked their magic.

The realities of immigration/exportation prevailed last summer, so for many months, Ward and his music were just a memory, accompanied by a postcard. Then, at Christmas, he reappeared at a favourite jam venue – West Side Johnny’s – with a copy of this tape, recorded in the UK, in hand.

We choose this time to devote this space to give Ward two thumbs up for this tape. We know Ward will be back: he may be part of this future Toronto scene developing; this could be a hot collector’s item someday. Oh ya, in case we forgot to mention it, the music and tunes are awesome!

Gary 17, T.O. Nite, January 1994