Raised in the Yorkshire countryside in the North of England, Ben moved away two years ago, heading for Tottenham in London. “Yorkshire’s beautiful,” he says, “that scenery and the coast and the air will always inspire my music, but I don’t have to be there. I lived it and breathed it for a while.”
Tragically losing his father to lung cancer in April 2013 was the impetus Ben needed to make a change to his surroundings - one that manifests itself in his second album, ‘After The Rain’.
His father’s death came at the peak of Ben's successes with his debut album, the critically lauded ‘Last Smoke Before The Snowstorm“I just knew that I needed to not do this for a while,” he admits of his mental state following his father’s passing.
Ben took himself around the globe in search of solace, flying out to Sydne. Finding professional and medical help along the way, it took the eventual, natural rediscovery of his creativity to finally pull Ben out of the darkness.
‘After The Rain’ is the sound of Benjamin finding peace with himself. Written during his lowest, it's a record that exists between the light and the dark, unafraid to dive deep into both at any moment.
From his long-standing, fanatical love of hip-hop (“Sometimes there's a thing, where I say, ‘I really like that Drake song’, and people are like, “No, you sit by the sea and wear cardigans!” he laughs),
‘Mayflies’, a track constructed around a doomy, electronic sample, to ‘Some Other Arms’, Bens horizons continue to expand. ‘Summer' finds Ben at his most expansive, the soft airiness of that unmistakable vocal finding new life amongst a blossoming backdrop.
After the release of his debut, Benjamin Francis Leftwich is ready to lay himself bare with ‘After The Rain’. “If one person emails me and says ‘This is the most moving song I’ve ever heard and it really helped me’ - if it gets one person like that, I’d be really happy,” he says, humbly. With a record as both effortlessly beautiful and hauntingly honest as ‘After The Rain’ to his name, he’d do well to strengthen his inbox.
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