The double platinum selling artist BEN HOWARD has today announced he shall play a very special outdoor show the historic Cardiff Castle this summer, as part of his huge 26 date UK, Irish & EU Tour. Including the already SOLD OUT Alexandrea Palace Park, London.
The run of shows will also include stops in Glasgow and Dublin. These headline dates are expected to be the first opportunity for fans to hear new material.
A decade since that debut album was released, 2021’s fourth album, ‘Collections From The Whiteout’, debuted at #1 in the UK album chart (Ben’s second chart topping record after 2014’s I Forget Where We Were), and as he puts the finishing touches to album five, it’s exciting to hear the next chapter and some new material from the stage.
Ben had always approached his albums with a clear idea of what they were going to be, be it the pastoral songwriting of his Brit award-winning 2011 debut, the electrified anguish of its chart-topping follow up, I Forget Where We Were, or the rich atmospherics of 2018’s acclaimed Noonday Dream.
The road to Howard’s fourth album, however, was far more uncertain.
Two summers ago he was driving through Portugal listening to People Collective, the collaborative project spearheaded by Justin Vernon and The National’s Aaron Dessner. As he crossed the river Tagus, the circular loops of 17-minute track Santa Agnes, written and recorded by the Dessner brothers, captivated him. It captured a moment he was keen not to forget and gave him an impetus to get back home and to work on a new record.
Ben said…….
“I had a phase where it was going to be a concept record. I didn’t feel like I had loads of stuff about myself that I wanted to write about so I was cherry picking bits of news feeds and little interesting stories.
Then when you tinker with it, you try and fit words in, you stretch it and then all of a sudden your normal tics start feeding into it and songs end up being partly about yourself partly about someone else. It’s sort of an amalgamation. I wanted to write a concept record, but I got distracted.
I’ve always had an inclination towards Celtic and English folk. I listen to a lot of old Irish rebel music – that’s my Sunday morning jam. But rather than copying a style, I’m really keen on the amalgamation of styles and how you can fuse things together.”
You can see Ben play songs, old and new when the tour kicks off at La Riviera in Madrid on 18th May, and includes two nights in Amsterdam on 19th and 20th June, and a special night at the Philarmonie de Paris on the 4th July.
BEN HOWARD gets to Cardiff Castle on Sunday 23rd July. Tickets for the tour will go on sale from 10am this on Friday 24th March via Ben’s website HERE.
The Cardiff concert is delivered by 3 time UK Live Regional promoter of The Year Orchard Live & FKP Scorpio who have brought some highly successful shows at the Cardiff Castle. Including Noel Gallaghers High Flying Birds, Catfish & The Bottlemen, Paul Weller & Pete Tong & Heritage Orchestra.
