Album review: Ben Howard asks all the questions on Is It?

Disturbing album artwork aside, this is a beautiful record.

‘What’s mine anyway?,’ Ben Howard sings on Spirit, the penultimate track of this, his fifth studio album. ‘My feelings seem to be arranged/Spirit/Is it?’ he continues. The question mark in Is It? feels an intrinsic part of the record: its ten tracks are shaped by the need to question. Being answered, though, seems far less important.

The context of its creation clearly influence Is It?. As Howard himself has explained, and partially narrates on opening track Couldn’t Make It Up, while sitting in the garden at home he found himself unable to think properly, form sentences or even speak for over an hour. Not long after, it happened again. It turned out he had suffered two mini-strokes, an experience that had a major effect in shaping Is It?

“I found it impossible not to dwell on the absurdity of it, that with one tiny clot, one can lose all faculties. It really ate into the writing of the record,” Howard wrote on his website. In an interview with the Guardian he spoke of a overloading of the senses and feeling “hypersensitive to everything” during the mini-strokes. Listening to Is It?, whilst this experience is not explicitly explored on every track, its presence can definitely be felt, whether it is in the distorted, choppy vocal segments in Moonraker and Spirit, or the lush beats of Walking Backwards. Most explicitly, the 90-second Total Eclipse, which features broken-up samples and fragments of speech, seems an attempt to sonically recreate the moment of the mini-strokes themselves.

Those experiences inform the record, but they do not define it, and whether or not you listen to Is It? knowing the context of its creation, there is plenty to explore here. Is It? is a record that demands multiple re-listenings, best experienced through headphones; rich and densely layered, each song feels packed with snippets of sound – a vocal sample here, a little guitar riff there – that you do not always notice the first time round but which you might hear much later. These blink-and-you-miss-them sonic moments make Is It? such a rewarding album to listen to; it is a record to explore and get lost in. The songs here often take unexpected turns, notably in the chorus of the upbeat Walking Backwards and the sudden increase in tempo of wistful Richmond Avenue, to the extent that on first listens I checked to see whether I was listening to the same song. Whether this is purposeful or not, it is still highly effective; enjoy each moment as it comes, Howard seems to be saying, rather than striving to make sense of the whole.

Standout tracks include the beautiful Richmond Avenue, Howard’s recollections of childhood weekends spent with his father lent extra poignancy by the song featuring Uilleann pipes, instruments that featured heavily on one of Howard’s father’s favourite records. The more sombre Little Plant finishes the record strongly: “muddy’s the water anyhow,” Howard sings in an emotional second half of the song that suggests struggle still lies ahead. Listening to this album, though, you feel that Howard is equipped with the wisdom to deal with it. While full of questions, there is a contented feel to Howard’s lyrics; the act of asking alone seems enough. Whether or not he is answered is unimportant. Just being able to question is enough.

There was relatively little fanfare attached to the release of this record and at the time of writing very few reviews published. I don’t think Howard will be bothered by any of this. Throughout his career, his sound and lyrics have always shifted in the directions that he wants to explore. Within this record, there is a feeling of contentment and ease within himself and the music he creates. Is It? is yet another successful reinvention of sound and of focus by an artist who has always seemed determined to chart his own path.

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