Ben Kunder – Searching For The Stranger
Comino Music – 2020
When you read a novel, it’s easy to get lost in the text, word creates images, images create settings, and before you know it, you’ve constructed an entire world. Ben Kunder creates a world full of wonder on Searching For The Stranger. Comprised of characters from his own life, a fascinating synthesis of people and experiences charge the album with a palpable power.
Following his recent tour of Germany, he spent a few days in Berlin soaking up cultural and historical narratives. Putting them all together, along with his own Jewish heritage and secular humanist background, the song Berlin emerged. The opening lines set the scene “I was in Berlin on the anniversary of some forsaken tragedy, shadows of my past.” Playing off wailing siren sounds and heavy guitar, what emerges is a narrative of renewed possibilities and healing of old wounds.
Acceptance seems to be one of the keys to Searching For The Stranger. As Kunder suggests the album, “… is not only about searching for something or someone different but about accepting that the strange and weird can be beautiful, too.” There’s also a sense of renewal in the cascading piano of Lunenburg and the chorus that offers the hope, “I’m lucky I guess, it’ll all work out.”
Kunder strains to remain under control while an electric piano sadly swirls the opening notes of Tornado. “I am only human you know I make mistakes, and the hurtful things you say are the clouds that hang over me.” He strains to get out of the tornado’s control, as it struggles to maintain its hold over him.
The green buds and notions of rebirth inform Spring. Sounds of a church organ blend with piano as two repeated sets of lines create choruses reveal the depth of emotion at the heart of the song, while choirs of Ben Kunders and Carleigh Aikins, sing “I’m learning how to love you better each day,” followed by, “You have to grow up too early sometimes.”
The images Ben Kunder lays out on Searching For The Stranger establish a songwriter who is not afraid to expose himself. The raw emotion that he displays gives us a glimpse of what it is like to be alive in a word that swings wildly from one direction to the next. Kunder has chosen to try and enjoy the ride, which under the circumstances seems to make sense.
Photo Credit: Vanessa Heins