Big breaks rarely happen overnight. No matter the industry, sometimes it takes ten to twenty years to have your moment. The true measure of an artist is how they push through those years of setbacks to reach that moment when it feels like their time.
Songwriter Ben Labat has been plugging away for over twenty years. Beginning with his band The Terms in 2004, and going until his new album Echolocationism. During that time, the artist has faced more serious setbacks and tragedies than anyone deserves.
But he’s kept going, kept writing, singing and recording. And hope runs through this new record in a powerful way.
Opener “Set a New Course” evokes the feeling of looking forward, and leaving the laments and pain of the past behind you. As he’s done on most of the album, the song is just Labat and a guitar, letting the songwriting speak for itself. Labat’s vocals are plaintive and full of road-weary soul. This approach to vocals helps him sell lines like “Everybody wants to wag the dog, and all the dog wants is a bone” that maybe would fall flat from another artist.
One can feel the understated passion in Labat’s tenor on “If This Ain’t Love”, as he sings “You taught me everything I’ll never need to know about holding on and letting go.” It has the echoes of Springsteen’s solo work, as he lets the songs breathe so that every note and chord can stir the soul.
Single “Islands” has the breezy air of a Jack Johnson track, but with an undercurrent of melancholy that emotionally hooks you in, even as the melody would fit in fine on any coffeehouse playlist. The pining on “Once a Runner, Always a Runaway” is heartbreaking, especially as he lets “you finally got your ticket out of here” linger. There’s an emotional honesty here than can be faked. It’s what will make this one of those albums that connect deeply with listeners – they’ll see themselves in these stories and characters.
After his decades of struggles, Ben Labat deserves to finally get his time in the spotlight with this album, along with some easy roads ahead. Listen to a few of Labat’s songs from Echolocationism in our Bad Ass Break-Outs Playlist.
