Benji Kirkpatrick - In Phase (2023) Hi-Res

With squeezebox maestro John Kirkpatrick for a father and the multi-talented Sue Harris (hammered dulcimer, oboe, singer, composer) as mother, Benji Kirkpatrick was born into the midst of the 1970s/80s English folk scene. After releasing his own debut album, Dance in the Shadow, in 1998, he’s rarely, if ever, been without a project or two, often more, to keep him busy. Over the following ten years, he released another three solo albums. Solo, but with an ever-increasing flock of guests, on the last of the three, the 2008 release Boomerang, I count eight guest musicians, including Mum and Dad. But this ten-year period was also when Benji became increasingly involved with bands; first came Faustus, later the mighty Bellowhead, The Seth Lakeman Band and, much later still, Steeleye Span and his own band, Benji Kirkpatrick & The Excess.

Consequently, the last fifteen years have seen him release only two solo albums, 2015’s Hendrix Songs and now, In Phase. Hendrix Songs was a truly solo venture, with Benji playing all the instruments, but with In Phase, he’s back with a few guests to keep him company. The source material, though, lies firmly with Benji; all twelve songs are written by him, the product of the enforced downtime we all suffered between 2020 and 2022.

He described those times as when “New songs were appearing and seeds of ideas that had already germinated grew into fully formed entities.” Initially, he felt the songs too personal to view as band material and so set about engaging with Pete Brown to record the songs using his Oxfordshire studio and for him to act as co-producer with Benji. The two of them had forged a good working relationship recording Gold Has Worn Away, the 2019 album Benji made with The Excess and, glancing at the musicians listed for the opening title track of In Phase, you might think little had changed. Pete Thomas on bass and Joelle Barker on drums are currently the other members of The Excess, and Pete Brown, while continuing his producer rôle, has also moved around to the other side of the desk to contribute slide guitar and shaker to this first track. Benji, naturally, handles the vocal, acoustic guitar and mandolin on this opening song but, as you’d expect, plays an array of other stringed instruments on the remaining tracks. As on the 2019 album, he plays piano on several tracks and now goes a step further, adapting his keyboard skills to a Hammond organ, a Fender Rhodes and a Philips Philicorda, both vintage electric pianos.

With this array of instrumentation at his disposal, Benji has been able to construct richly textured arrangements for this album. We’re not talking prog rock levels, but it’s quite some step away from singer/songwriter, and that’s apparent right from the outset. In Phase starts simply with acoustic guitar, but as soon as the vocals come in, they are accompanied by phrases picked from the treble end of the piano and the trademark swirling of the Hammond organ, along with more predictable bass guitar and drums. As the song progresses, Pete’s slide guitar joins, and there’s a final component amidst a quieter middle section when tremolo from a mandolin underlies the voice.

The lyrics to this first song aren’t telling an obvious story though two lines stand out for me, “Even when we’re face to face all the words can be misplaced. Language leaves a lot to say, so much more is there at play” and Benji describes the song as about trying to make a connection to someone in the non-physical realm. The CD includes a lyrics booklet, so a combination of listening and reading allows insights into Benji’s mentality during lockdown. For some songs, the intentions are painfully clear, Barefaced Lies gives voice to the righteous anger that so many felt over the behaviour of our leaders at that time. The Undead and Mindspace are equally scathing about lives lived in the virtual echo chambers of social media and the reliance on the false expertise that can generate. It seems Benji was venting anger, frustration and many other negative emotions when writing these lyrics but the post-lockdown process of turning them into the songs we hear on the album was, I trust, a far happier time.

It meant working again with musicians with whom he’d had successful pre-pandemic collaborations. The three already mentioned contribute to the majority of tracks; whenever drums are needed, Joelle supplies them, and Pete Thomas is most commonly on bass guitar but switches to double bass for three of the more acoustic tracks. Pete Brown is something of a jack of all trades, adding a variety of guitars, electric and acoustic lap steel, slide and electric, but also Appalachian dulcimer, shruti box and adding his voice to back Benji on The Undead. Also adding backing vocals for one track, You Could Try Roulette, is singer/songwriter Alex Hart, a colleague from Benji’s work with Seth Lakeman. The remaining backing vocals are handled by another established singer/songwriter, Aitch McRobbie, who happens to live not far from Pete’s studio. None of the backing vocals are of the oo-oo style, these are strong voices singing, on selected lines, the same lyric as Benji. All three voices, particularly the two female ones, are sufficiently different from Benji’s to deliver an impact. There is just one other guest contributor to mention, and that’s Brett Fuller playing Digeridoo on Sunken Ship.

All of these contributions are, of course, supplementary to Benji’s core rôle, and that core has many facets. One that he’s particularly pleased with is When We Get Through, a gently delivered solo vocal with only Benji’s piano playing as accompaniment, the first time he’s used solo piano on a recording. So, while this stands out as a first, we’re much more familiar with him playing various stringed instruments, and there’s no lack of that on this album. After the acoustic guitar and mandolin of the opening track, the alternative instruments come thick and fast. On the very next track, he supplements the guitar with electric bouzouki and, for good measure, takes over from Pete Thomas on bass guitar. Next, on Sunken Ship, he switches to electric guitar and acoustic bouzouki but also introduces a different keyboard instrument, the 1960s vintage Philips Philicorda. It’s not until track 8, You Could Try Roulette, that the final set of strings are heard, coming from a banjo.

It’s not often you’re faced with such an array of instruments on an album that, in theory, at least, is a solo project. But, in fairness, over half of them are played by Benji. All this variety of instrumentation translates into an album that paints a subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, different soundscape on each track. As each one begins, it’s as well to reset your expectations and enjoy it as if it were the first. The 2019 album with The Excess marked a welcome return for Benji the songwriter, and In Phase gives another massive boost to his reputation as both a songwriter and as an astoundingly varied multi-instrumentalist.