Ben Howard will release his fifth studio album, Is It?, on June 16.  It marks his first release since experiencing two mini strokes (TIAs) last year. Produced by Bullion (Westerman, Nilüfer Yanya, Orlando Weeks), the LP is a lush, sonically splintered album which captures Howard working through those moments of seismic shift.  Today he shares the album’s first single and lead track, “Couldn’t Make It Up” and says, “I found it impossible not to dwell on the absurdity of it, that with one tiny clot, one can lose all faculties. It really ate into the writing of the record.”

In March 2022, Ben Howard was sitting in his garden when he found himself unable to think clearly, form sentences or speak for almost an hour. A month later, after the same thing happened again, the Ivor Novello Award-winning singer-songwriter learned he’d suffered two TIAs (transient ischemic attacks – known as mini-strokes). “It was out of the blue,” says the 35 year-old. “It was a confusing time.” 

That June, after a month of inconclusive hospital tests Howard and his band decamped to Le Manoir de Léon, where they’d previously worked on his acclaimed third album Noonday Dream.  “We went in and put down ten songs in ten days,” Howard says, “We worked through the heatwave, the air conditioning broke, after what had happened I was so tired in the afternoons that I slept a lot. We just played solidly and slept, there was no time for retrospection.”

Photo Courtesy: Toby Coulson