Sometimes pure fortune can play a part in showing you something new, something different, something breathtaking. A wrong turning may take you to a new place, a missed appointment may become a chance meeting, a mistaken purchase to a new infatuation. Unfortunately, Ben Christophers' debut album is none of the above - a choose at haste, repent at leisure incident. It's not that the album itself is bad in any way, it's beautiful, and infatuating, or at least it should be. His voice is an elegy for sorrow, the music a whispered apology, yet it's an apology you wouldn't accept, not because you don't want to, but because there's nothing interesting in the words.It's almost like lift muzak for Radiohead fans, depressed heart rending stuff, but just delivered in a void, bereft of the fire and brimstone, or the empathy that could have made it a wonderful album.
Each track tumbles into one another, not actually, but faced with such a mind-numbing diet of mediocrity the brain switches off and relegates the music to the background. It's probably good music to revise to, because not only do you automatically ignore it, but it provides something even less interesting than the work you are trying not to do.
Having heard a wonderful piece of whimsy on Steve Lamacque, a song about all the best advice your friends never give you, I bought the album. Sadly it was all a mistake, and that song wasn't even by Ben Christophers.
Sometimes pure fortune can play a part in showing you something new, something different, something breathtaking. Sometimes though, it can just lead you up the garden path.