It’s been six years since Ben Glover’s last solo album (Shorebound), with his most recent release being the Sweet Wild Lily EP in 2020. And The Sun Breaks Through The Sky found him taking a slower and more considered approach. Creating music for himself rather than being at the mercy of the usual album cycle, the production process for the album began in 2019, allowing the music to develop organically without heed to some external agenda. The result, with an underlying theme of home, is a top-notch addition to an already outstanding catalogue.
Co-produced with Dylan Alldredge, with assorted co-writers and guest musicians, longtime collaborator Neilson Hubbard among them, And The Sun Breaks Through The Sky opens with the simple strummed sway of Make My Way Home, featuring Jaimee Harris on backing and Johnny Duke on electric guitar. It’s a song about finding peace and roots (“I’m at ease sitting here/Where I’ve been restless before/I can hear the sea whisper lost secrets to the shore/I once lived in the future/But I don’t anymore/And the past is a story told”) and the epiphany of “I have searched for the meaning/I have searched for the song/I have searched for the place/In which I belong/Till I found it was always right here along/Staring me straight in the soul”.
A co-write with Hubbard, who plays drums, while Will Kimbrough joins Duke on electric, the title track has a bluesy organ groove and one of the few songs he’s written with a clear political edge relating to Northern Ireland where he sings “Good luck to you whatever/It is you’re fighting for/On that angry Antrim shore” but cautions “Let me tell you a story/’Bout waving flags of glory/’Bout the dangers of telling stories”, asking “Do you believe in a history?/Do your eyes see what they see?”, the title metaphorically about bringing light after the dark storm clouds part (“Have you seen forgiveness?/Like two brothers bleeding/But in the middle meeting”).
Harris again on backing with Alldredge on bass and Colm McLean contributing electric guitars and pedal steel, There’s A River is a strummed, gradually soaring co-write with Eliot Bronson from The Brilliant Inventions and again speaks of ties that bind (“There’s a river running/Through you, through me”) and finding yourself in the moment, taking the time to pause and settle (“All the roads will crumble/And we’ll burn up all the maps/Wherever you’re lost is where you’ll be found/Nowhere to go but here right now/Nothing to gain nothing to lose/Nothing but love to fall into”).
Simply arranged for fingerpicked acoustic guitar and piano, the breathily sung The Meadow is the first of two Mary Gauthier co-writes, a lovely song about a troubled (“in need of forgiveness, and the awful grace of God”) restless soul (“Don’t know why I’m always leaving, don’t know why know why I left you… I’m so tired of running, from things I cannot leave”) looking to rebuild bridges and reconciliation (“Won’t you meet me in the meadow?/We can look up at the stars/Lean into the wind dream again/Find out who we are…No more alone/We can lay down in the grass, till the feelings pass, then go home”).
Written with Kent Agee, arranged for acoustic, double bass, Hammond and flugelhorn, Lifetimes Apart is a storysong that touches on similar themes (“We’re all in the same place, lifetime’s apart”) about a couple who have drifted away from each other, the one “Somewhere in East Oklahoma/Painted in Arkansas grey/She’s looking down highway forty/And Lord, it’s a long empty way …She wants to have faith in tomorrow/But hope is as far as she’ll go” and the other “drinking his first cup of coffee/Thinking maybe he’ll give her a call?/But he wonders how long they can lean on the past before somebody falls”, the metaphorical image of “a dog barking out in the distance/On a chain that you don’t need to see/You can tell by the sound that it’s tied to the ground/In a place where it’s not meant to be” needing little explanation. With the line about “life desperately looking for cracks…like a hole leading to somewhere better/Some day they’ll hold hands and jump through”, it ends with the need to have the courage to make the move.
One of two Kim Richey co-writes, she adding backing vocals and the pair joined by Harris and Maddie Alldredge as the choir of voices, One Fine Day, Barry Walsh on vibraphone, is about making that escape and laying down that weary burden and finding contentment with who and where you are (“Leave all my troubles/Leave all the city lights/Back there and go where/I can see the stars at night…And when I’ll look back/Down through the years/Down the twisted road I took/And every turn that brought me here/I’ll sit there with the ghosts of/Every life I might have led/As the evening sun goes down/Well drink a toast to no regrets”).
A track previously released on the Lily EP, Richey on featured vocals, co-written by Matraca Berg and Gretchen Peters, on whose Dancing With The Beast album it first appeared, Arguing With Ghosts is, for me, the album’s golden moment, a poignant, wistful lament for the changes and loss and regrets wrought by the passing of time as, over a churchy organ backing and simple strummed guitar, he sings “I feel lost in my home town/Since they tore the drive in down/I find myself all turned around”, of “They say the mirror never lies/I’ve still got my father’s eyes/But I’m getting hard to recognise” and how “There’s a picture on the wall/We got married in the fall/Now I don’t know those kids at all”, the arrangement gradually swelling with electric guitar as it heads to a close with the broken down narrator “at the same old kitchen table/In the same old busted chair/I’m drinking whiskey and arguing with the ghosts”.
The second Richey co-write, tinted with haunted Appalachian tones, Break For You features Kimbrough on ganjo (a guitar/banjo hybrid) and acoustic with Natalie Schlabs on backing and is a simple, straightforward melodically rippling love song (“Oh darlin if ever the world should fall apart/The rivers run dry, winter stars go dark/And if from sleep, we choose never to rise/I’ll hold you forever to the other side …I would suffer the loss no matter the cost/And I’d let my heart/Break for you”).
And The Sun Breaks Through The Sky ends, then, with the other Gauthier collaboration and, echoing Kindness off Shorebound, the piano accompanied Till We Meet Again is another of his wonderful parting glass benedictions, the unfiltered humanity of Glover’s soul radiating as he blesses “May eternity hold you in the hollow of her hand/May a soft wind enfold you as you travel distant lands/May the moon and stars delight you as the daylight dims/Till the morning sun warms your face…May there be no more struggle, no more pain/May you sleep inside the stillness of the night …May you never be a stranger, may you never feel alone/May you reunite with family and friends may they walk you home/May love embrace you in a dance that never ends/May you rest in gentle arms till I see you again”.
Shorebound won the Album of the Year at the 2019 UK Americana Awards; they should start engraving this year’s trophy now with And The Sun Breaks Through The Sky.
And The Sun Breaks Through The Sky is released 26th April 2024 via Goldrush Records.