Opinion Piece - Ben Howard Concert Review
For those of you that do not know who Ben Howard is, let me give you the low-down: he is a humble 28 year old indie folk musician who has taken the United Kingdom (and now the global) music scene by storm since his debut album release of Every Kingdom in 2011. He had earned two awards at the Brits, after floating to the UK Top 5 Chart.
The Seed Experience had announced last year December that they would be bringing this talented musician down to Cape Town and Johannesburg in March 2015. However due to popular demand, and a instantaneous sold out concert for his performance in Cape Town (and unexpected tour changes); Ben Howard would now perform for 2 nights in Cape Town (22nd and 23rd July) and the venue had been moved to the Grand Arena at Grand West. Albeit, the sound quality and lighting was impeccable, no one who had attended the concert could seem to shake the feeling that the venue should have remained at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. This is probably because Howard’s music is filled with guitar, lots of it being acoustic, and is fairly slow paced and chilled out; so what better than to sit on a picnic blanket in Cape Town’s beautiful botanical gardens and enjoy the slow melodies floating of the crowd from the stage? But it was a good effort to Grand West, because the lighting and digitals were fantastic, and provided somewhat of an intimate stage throughout the performance.
As for Ben Howard’s actual performance, it seemed as though there was something lacking. By no means was it talent, but I think that we would just would have liked Howard to be a more engaging performer with the crowd. Howard stepped on stage in a plain black t-shirt and jeans, said “how’s it going,” and jumped straight in to Small Things from his new album. He did not stop playing until about the 3rd song to thank the audience, because after every song the crowd cheered him on (probably hoping we could get another word or two out of him). Howard had about 3 or 4 guitars he interchanged between through the change in songs, I believe it was to keep authentic to his original releases.
It wasn’t until Keep Your Head Up that the crowd really came alive. In unison, the crowd sang along to the beautiful guitar strumming and vocals of Howard. Howard played one more song, and then spoke to the crowd, saying how the tour had mainly been for the new album but he sees that many are old fans and did not want us to feel left out. He then began playing a Howard classic, Black Flies followed by Gracious and the crowd sang along in unison. His encore was probably what had made the crowd most pleased, as when Ben Howard returned to the stage, he spoke to the audience, thanking us for being so welcoming and introduced his touring band. He then proceeded to play what seemed to be the most requested song throughout the night, The Wolves.
Truth be told, it is amazing to see an artist who is still so true to his music, and is more focused on his music than being a performer. Howard was humble and authentic to his music throughout the concert, thus him as an artist I cannot fault. However I do believe he could have engaged with crowd more, and the venue should have remained at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens.
Written By: Nicky Fastovsky
