Ben Watt’s stunning 2014 album, Hendra, saw the Everything But the Girl man combine superb songwriting with emotional edge, in lyrics that dealt with the deaths of his father and half-sister, and his mother’s slide into dementia. Fever Dream has a similarly understated, eerie intensity, and Bernard Butler’s hazy, Isley Brothers-like guitar playing is again ever-present, as Watt sticks with what he calls “folk-jazz and distorted, strings-bent rock”. However, the lyrical subject has changed to how human relationships change over the years. Once again, Watt brings a keen observer’s eye, and tiny details offer a lot: he refers to a departed parent who “remained, a silent ghost”, and returns to his childhood home to find that the past can be left behind as easily as “bricks and wood”. Whereas Hendra’s song Spring saw hope in renewal, here it’s the colder months, in the song Winter’s Eve, that find Watt uplifted and reborn, insisting: “There’s still so much I want to do.” In his early 50s, he is making some of the best music of his career.
