Ben Arthur

If you’re going to take some time off after two years of relentless touring, you might as well stay busy. Or at least that’s what Ben Arthur thinks. But recording a follow-up to 2004’s Sony/Red-distributed Edible Darling wasn’t enough for Arthur.
“Writing a novel was something I had always wanted to try, so I just sat down and gave it a shot,” Arthur says.
Meanwhile Arthur finished his new album, Mouthfeel, at Dubway, the same studio where he recorded Edible Darling. He had some great help on the songs, with guest vocals provided by Warner Brothers recording artist Rachael Yamagata, and bass playing by Ollabelle’s own Byron Isaacs. Arthur also had production help from DJ Big Wiz, the beat master who adds so much to the music of Def Jux’s Aesop Rock.
National Public Radio says of the new record, "The quirky optimism that marked Ben Arthur's album Edible Darling has aged and darkened on his long-awaited second disc [sic] Mouthfeel. A slippery disc in sound and meaning...which burrows intimately into love, pain and loss."
To get the word out about the new album, Arthur toured internationally, playing in clubs, high schools, house concerts, bookstores, colleges, and on radio and television. He did interviews and live performances on Sirius, WMMM, WCBE, WMRA, WNRN, WCNR, WBSD, and SACC TV, and songs from Mouthfeel have been airing on WXRT, KCUV, KVRB, WDST, CIDR, KTHX, WQKL, WRLT, WXRV, WZEW, and others.
One of the high points of the Mouthfeel tours was being featured on the syndicated radio program Acoustic Café, which airs on 75-plus stations in the States alone, and on Voice of America worldwide. He also recorded his third half-hour special for XM Satellite Radio and Ben’s song On a Sunday was NPR’s “Song of the Day.”
Ben’s music has even been featured on broadcast television. He licensed five songs to ABC, four to Showtime, and is now a regular contributing composer for CBS.
Arthur’s lyric are often brooding and dark-laced, images of betrayal, sex, humiliation, faith, yearning and death float behind a super-melodic pop facade. “Tattoo” an upbeat acoustic number, is about sex, love…and suicide. Like much of Arthur’s work, it looks mortality square in the face: “Like Abraham, one day I awoke and realized/That along with the will, the hand, and the knife/The throat was also mine.” “Exit Wound” shares similar themes, though in a more dark-toned bed. Yet, listening to “The Sun Also Rises”—Arthur’s impassioned duet with Rachael Yamagata—you hear an uplifting message of hope and deliverance underneath the distorted electric guitars and driving rhythm.
Rolling Stone says, “Ben Arthur has the looks and hooks of John Mayer.”
Maybe the critics like the duality in Ben’s music. “There’s nothing in my work that doesn’t smack of some pretty grim, difficult stuff,” he says matter-of-factly. “Most of my songs are a marriage of contradictions: bleak and difficult sentiments lurking under upbeat, melodies.”
Arthur first picked up a guitar when he was 14 and immediately began writing songs. In Charlottesville, where he attended the University of Virginia, he developed a local following, and eventually shared the stage with Tori Amos, Shawn Colvin, Bruce Hornsby and fellow townsman Dave Matthews. In fact, Matthews’s collaborators Boyd Tinsley and Tim Reynolds played on Arthur’s first album, Curses and Rapture.
“I prefer lush images,” he says. “I don’t like songs that are too specific, too literal. What interests me is ambiguity and mystery, the spaces between the sentences. Like in ‘Strawberry Fields’: ‘I mean, er, yes, well, no, that is, I think I disagree….’ that’s the way people talk. I’m most fascinated by the underlying contradictions in people’s motivations, the way they deal with one another.”
In fact, the melodic element of his music is so strong, the hooks so catchy, that it’s possible to miss the underlying lyrical complexity and contradiction in his words. All of which is fine by Arthur.
“People can hear what they want in my music,” he says. “Like in Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the USA’, some people hear a patriotic anthem and others hear a protest song. If that happens with my music, I’m fine with that.”
“Actually,” he laughs, “that sounds perfect.”
Ben will be releasing his first novel, (The Lure of the Distant Sound), and fifth album (a live collection called Roadkill) in March at Joe’s Pub in New York City, and will follow this with another international tour.
Live performances, interviews, fan-made videos and covers of Ben’s songs by other musicians can be found online at MySpace (where his songs have logged more than 30,000 plays), Facebook, iLike, LastFM, and linked to his YouTube channel. The list of Ben Arthur stations set up by his fans on Pandora internet radio currently totals 50 pages.