PVC Presents BENJAMIN FRANCIS LEFTWICH

Plus Special Guests ELANOR MOSS + WOUNDED BEAR

Benjamin Francis Leftwich’s fourth album comes with a heavy title: To Carry a Whale. “It’s an observation on what it’s like to be a sober alcoholic addict a couple of years in,” he explains. “A whale is heavy to carry. It’s gonna hurt you to carry it. But it’s also beautiful, and it’s a miracle to beable to carry all that at all.”

London-based Yorkshireman Leftwich is now 31 and a decade away from his debut album, when he was one of the first signings to the Dirty Hit label – still his home alongside The 1975, Wolf Alice and Beabadoobee. Last Smoke Before the Snowstorm cracked the top 40 in 2011 and included Shine – a cute, romantic indie folk ballad that was remixed by tropical house king Kygo and named by Spotify their “most addictive song of 2014”, as the song that was repeat-played most often that year. He operated at the forefront of that wave of young men with acoustic guitars and big feelings to express – Ben Howard, Michael Kiwanuka, James Vincent McMorrow – a style that never shouted, but proved highly popular.

At that time, however, aspirations to do something addictive had a much darker meaning. This fourth album is the first one that he has written and recorded entirely sober, a state he has maintained since spending 28 days in rehab in January 2018. Today his soft voice is lower and richer and the music, produced with Sam “Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly” Duckworth is spare and clear, the better to experience lyrics that sound more like painfully honest diary entries than emblematic poetry.

“I definitely fell for that myth that you had to be fucked up to create,” he says. “Having a sensitive heart enables you to create with such intensity, but you also feel the weight of stuff so heavily. Many people use some kind of medicine successfully to take the edge off. I eventually figured out that I couldn’t.” Finally he realised that drink, drugs, or any other crutch, were not helping him, but holding him back from, making his best work. In fact, his writing rate has increased dramatically since he cleaned up. He says almost every song on To Carry a Whale was written in around three hours each. “They definitely come more quickly. One of the things that was holding me back for so long was this self-centred fear: ‘How can I present myself as a master of the English language?’ Now I just want to know, ‘Do I feel it? Is it the truth?’ A bit of editing and it’s done.”

It is of course standard practice for every musician to claim that their latest album is their greatest, but Leftwich genuinely is making and experiencing his music in a different, more rewarding way. “By finding this new way of living, and doing the work to change the way I see the world, I’ve shrunk that channel between me and the magic that helps us to find songs,” he says. “I really believe this is the best music I’ve ever made. It’s definitely the most honest. I’m not hiding behind metaphors. I’m writing and singing from the heart in a way that feels surrendered and clear. I’ve never before sat at home listening to the masters again and again, just enjoying it.”That honesty extends to the way the music was recorded. Tired in Niagara was taped live in his hotel in Niagara Falls while on tour. Lines such as: “I’m crying in the hot tub/Reaching for my phone/Telling all my cousins I’m excited to be home,” aren’t symbolic. They’re nothing but the truth. Sydney, 2013, is another unambiguous snapshot of place and time, namechecking real friends, relatives and places as well as admitting: “I was in the middle of a summer of pain.”

Other songs were recorded across a four month period last year in his Tottenham home, in Urchin Studios in Hackney and in Duckworth’s Southend studio. Leftwich was initially resistant to the idea of writing with “Cape”, as he calls him, or indeed any outside influences – “It was an affront to my ego” – but as two singer-songwriters who have maintained careers and passionate fanbases well after the early buzz has quietened, they clicked as soon as they met. “We sat in London Fields, vaped for an hour and a half and became best friends,” says Leftwich. “The next day we wrote Oh My God Please together. Artists who are also producers understand that it isn’t a nine-to-five process. He was calling me every night at 11.”

Leftwich’s third album, Gratitude, was released in 2019, when he was well into his recovery. Lines such as “Look at all the peace I’ve found,” on the title track, displayed an optimism that he now realises was possibly unrealistic hopefulness rather than genuine candour about the here and now. “My head hadn’t caught up with where my heart was,” he admits today. “I was writing this widescreen stuff. Now I’m singing things I wouldn’t have sung before.” There couldn’t be less gloss on lines like these, from the exquisite piano ballad Slipping Through My Fingers: “It’s nothing like the movies/It’s nothing like you think/You’ll find me at the party/Crying at the sink.” That artist’s ego is nowhere to be seen. On Every Time I See a Bird, which is about missing his late father, the production is more abstract but the message remains powerfully sincere. Leftwich is inordinately proud to have come this far, still with the same label, who stuck with him when his initial hype had stilled and his personal life was shaken. “I’m much happier than when I was trying to control the show or attach my value to all these other things like the sales or the radio play or the blue tick. That never works,” he says. “My heart has always been in the songs. Now my head is in them as well.” http://www.benjaminfrancisleftwich.com