Ben Stafford - Beudy Penlan Review

Beudy Penlan is a magnificent portrait of heartache and lost love, a truly tearful, six-string love story that consumes the soul.

Ben Stafford, a folk musician from Lancashire, debuted last year with ‘Poetry’ where he experimented on an electric and acoustic affair of gentle guitar, 1970s tape delay and analogue drum machine. Today, he goes back to the roots of what made him tick in the first place. On a new project ‘Beudy Penlan’,  Stafford tells us truly tearful, six-string love story.

Even though inspired by the genre’s legend Bob Dylan, Stafford is more of a modern Donovan, conveying in simple words and notes innocence that we haven’t heard in a while. He voluntarily surrenders to the feelings to get to the heights of vulnerability. Similarly, to his first release, songwriter once again cuts open his now slightly healed broken heart to analyse its contents. What should be like a masochistic surgery, feels rather cathartic than cruel. The opening track, ‘In The End’ ponders over the passage of time to the gentle guitar’s weeps and lyrics patting lost love on the shoulder, wishing nothing but happiness. ‘Another Day’, along with the titular track, shines through the eight-song assembly with heart-wrecking instrumental and a message of the most humane ambivalence. Love is all that matters. He doesn’t mind waiting for it so like 21st century Gatsby mistaking the past for the future, he refuses to move on. In between the lines, we feel that he’s already accepted the possible failure.

‘Beudy Penland’ could live in ‘Call Me by Your Name’ Sufjan Stevens’ universe, somewhere on the Italian coast and off-grid. After all, or at least according to Ben Stafford, love, guitar and a little bit of imagination is everything you’d ever need.