Album Review: Benjamin Francis Leftwich - 'To Carry A Whale'
Clocking in at just over 32 minutes long, Benjamin Francis Leftwich’s accomplished fourth album is a breathless meditation on addiction and eventual sobriety.
Entitled To Carry A While, the album is “an observation on what it’s like to be a sober alcoholic addict a couple of years in,” according to Leftwich. “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 be able to carry all that at all.”
As you might expect, the tone of the album is fairly sombre. The prevailing mood is one of loneliness: the loneliness of a recovering addict. “Tired In Niagara”, notable for its delicate fingerpicked textures and half-whispered, falsetto vocals, sees Leftwich “crying in the hot tub, reaching for [his] phone” despite having “all the money the world could ever know”. Ultimately, no one is immune to isolation, regardless of status. The lyrics, while not explicitly referencing the pandemic, certainly strike a chord with the isolation that’s we’ve all experienced over the past 18 months.
There are moments of levity, though, such as closing track “Full Full Colour”. I’d hesitate to call it upbeat but there’s a certain anthemic quality to its four on the floor beat and soaring chorus.
While evoking the feelings that his sobriety has awakened, Leftwich also picks over the bones of his past relationship to drink and drugs. “Wide Eyed Wandering Child” sees Leftwich reflecting on his younger self from a distance. His use of third person shows the level of estrangement from his past, characterised by drug use and naivety. The Wide Eyed Wandering Child’s naivety is evident in his use of drugs to interact with the world around him. They open his eyes in a literal sense but, paradoxically, stop him from engaging with his life authentically. Any pain can be numbed by “a little bit of cocaine”.
This is Leftwich at his most candid. He doesn’t shy from the bleakness of sobriety, a new way of life which means seeing things as they really are: painful and meaningful in equal measure. The sacrifice of sobriety isn’t easy but, if this album is anything to go by, absolutely worthwhile if it means experiencing all the raw beauty the world has to offer.
Words by Dylan Wilby