Fever Dream

Fever Dream is the new solo album from Ben Watt. It was self-produced at London’s famous RAK Studio 2, and mastered by Bob Ludwig at Gateway Mastering in Maine – takes Hendra’s sonic template of open-tuned folk-jazz, distorted string-bent rock, and soulful rumination, and adds a fresh grainy intensity. It renews key partnerships withHendra’s vau­nted guitarist-sideman Bernard Butler and engineer Bruno Ellingham, and sprinkles guest vocal cameos from Boston’s dream-folk singer-songwriter Marissa Nadler and Hiss Golden Messenger’s M.C. Taylor. ‘At the album’s heart I just wanted to deepen existing relationships,’ Watt says. ‘Two years of playing live with Bernard has created a strong bond; the music we make feels spontaneous, ardent, unsentimental. We just went in and did most of it live. Small room, small band. A harder edge. Instruments spilling into each other.’ The pair are joined by drummer/percus­sionist and longtime ally Martin Ditcham (Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden) and new double bassist Rex Horan (Laura Marling’s Once I Was an Eagle / Neil Cowley Trio), who in Watt’s words ‘brilliantly blurs the boundaries between folk, jazz and rock’. Watt’s non-fiction writing and lyrics have been integral to his recent acclaim. His second memoir Romany and Tom – a portrait of his parents’ marriage – was longlisted for the prestigious Samuel Johnson Prize in 2014. (His first, 1996’s Patient was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year). Novelist Jonathan Coe recently commented Watt is ‘beyond doubt one of the great British singer-songwriters’, while The Guardian’s senior rock critic Alexis Petridis called the writing on Hendra ‘pretty much perfect’. Of the new songs, Watt says: ‘I got back from tour with a few notes for a new book, but life got in the way. Close friends were falling apart,my own relationships were being tested. I found I wanted to capture smaller snapshots about how love shifts over time, what endures, how we cope. And they became songs. Some came out darker and more troubled, others softer and more hopeful. And that then became the album structure. First half heavier, second half lighter. A sense of transformation, rather than just a collection of songs. I hadn’t done that before.’