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Album Details

• Artist: Ben Sures
• Album: Field Guide To Loneliness
• Label: bensures.com
• Year of Release: 2008
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: patchen on 2008-05-10

 

Singer/songwriter/Canadian sorta legend Ben Sures writes quirky, folky story-songs that are odes to large and small life moments, often with a silly take on them. That refusal to take himself or the plight of his characters makes "Field Guide To Loneliness" a literate, generous and oddly compassionate take on lives that seem to just come up short.

Big themes like loneliness and isolation fight for space with arguments at breakfast and dreams of solving revenge with extraterrestrial weapons.

Songs like "Used To Have a Raygun" "Till I Learned To Cook For you" and "Who Killed The Last Folksinger" keep their charm precisely because they seem to be candidates for dorky math rock, but remain sincere. Sures' wry vocal delivery and sometimes nasty slide guitar keep it real.

"Winnipeg" and "Drunk and In My Kitchen" would be hits in any parallel universe where solid songwriting and understate but sharp melodies rule. Even "Man of the Verge," another candidate for bathos, is rescued by Sures' charm and honesty. "Field Guide To Loneliness" is exactly that, but it rings hopeful. Ben Sures knows, and lets us in on the list of losses, but lets us know too that every little thing is gonna be alright.

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