Benjamin Folke Thomas – Modern Man
Aveline – 9 November 2018
Benjamin Folke Thomas returns with his new studio album Modern Man. While not necessarily always autobiographical, the songs are informed by the prospect of turning 30 and getting married, prompting thoughts of what happens next.
Having returned to Sweden after a decade in London, he recorded the album in Gothenburg over the course of three days accompanied by regular sidesmen Henning Sernhede and Johannes Mattsson on guitar and bass, respectively with new recruit Erik Berndtsson on drums. It also marks something of a departure in that he wrote much of the material on piano rather than guitar, that said, however, it’s still the latter that dominates the album, unmistakably so on Dead Horizon, a seven-minute number that, in contrast to the folksy acoustic elsewhere, turns up the amps for some hefty riffery and distortion-raging Crazy Horse-like solos. Indeed, its angry protest lyrics with lines like “They put up their signs showing the road to deliverance/That’s how they came, conquered and colonized a fool’s paradise” also have an air of Neil Young’s vitriol about them.
It starts, however, in more familiar form with the poppy upbeat and catchy Tasteless & Complacent, that rough grain sandpaper Tom Russell tinge to his voice and ooh-oohing backing vocals. The lyrics set out a theme of both self-doubt and selfishness he describes himself as “a self-made man of clay” with confused plans looking for “a band of saints to clear my body/Try find some heat in my breast” giving way to the ruthless ambition inherent in “those brownnose friends of mine/Whose talentless drivel won’t suffice/They are but pawns in a game of chess/First ones to get sacrificed”.
Yet that is immediately set against One Day’s scathing reflection on his early days (“I admit I wasn’t very good, I was trying too hard to be misunderstood”), which, in turn, is offset by a vision of how fame might affect this “worn out troubadour”, declaring “I’ll become right wing and forget about the poverty and the troubles I’ve been in”, before acknowledging “all I’ve ever wanted is modest but moderate success/To get recognized on the street sometimes, no more no less.” Thomas balances honest confessional and sardonic wit like an expert tightrope walker.
Keeping that image of making it big, the sparse strummed Stuff Of Dreams is a conversational wry fantasy of meeting blue-eyed Hollywood icon Paul Newman in a pool hall and thrashing him at nine ball, the pair retiring to a quiet corner to ‘chew the shit’, Newman promising to write him a part in his next movie before taking his chariot back to heaven with the parting words “Brace yourself for the concept of immortality.”
It’s very much back to the real world with Modern Man, another number where the electric guitars evoke Neil Young, with its unsettling lyric about a predatory stalker (“Sometimes I stand outside her building/Try to see her through the walls/I imagine what she’s wearing/Is it a skimpy little bra?”), the poisonous notion of male privilege, be that a property millionaire or “a poor father of four”, that somehow power over women is their birthright. It serves as the subtext of the country-lined Lily Like a Gunslinger, though this time it’s powerfully set within a #MeToo inspired story-song about a wife who “sick of busted lips/Tired of black and blue eyes” shoots her abusive husband dead.
Given his impending nuptials while writing the album, there’s a surprisingly dark tone to its marital visions, the melodically chiming One More Chance opening with the lines “Your bags are packed/You look ready to leave this cul de sac/The ring that once was on your finger has left a stain on our table”, imaging his wife leaving him for someone with a bigger bank balance. The refrain “Excuse my inability to dance/That I make you cry more than I make you laugh”, is like the negative zone version of Tougher Than The Rest.
Returning to a wider social perspective, as an observer rather than a crusader, the rockier Some People again addresses the sometimes contaminating nature of success, of how power “poisons the mind and pollutes the soul/Makes you blind to other people’s pain”, and the social divides where “some people hold the keys to shackles/Others fight to be free” and “some people make do with an old burned out car/And a beggar’s cup/Others build up an anger and decide to fight back/When they’ve had enough.”
It ends with the simple world-weary acoustic strum of Nature Of My Ways, one of the best things he’s written but also a pessimistic view that, no matter how high we fly, “flirting with the angels”, we’re inherently destined to fall from grace because, as he puts it, “I could not reject that deal with the devil/I could not neglect that offer of mutual respect/To bask in the glory of his fame.”
With its songs about the narcissistic male sense of entitlement psyche, the destructive and self-destructive nature of overreaching ambition and the world’s social injustice, it’s perhaps not the year’s most positive, optimistic album. It is, however, Thomas’s best yet, though whether it’s one he’d pack for the honeymoon is another matter entirely.
Order Modern Man via AMazon (Digital/CD/Vinyl)
BEN FOLKE THOMAS TOUR DATES
NOVEMBER HEADLINE TOUR (FULL BAND)
21st – The Castle Hotel, Manchester
22nd – The White Hart, Corby
23rd – The Prince Albert, Stroud
24th – Railway Inn Winchester
25th – Lexington London
26th – Kitchen Garden Café Birmingham (solo show)
http://www.benfolkethomas.com/