REVIEW; Ben Hutcheson's Self Titled Album

Ben Hutcheson - Came From You & When I Come To Town

Since it’s been a while, let’s catch up a little and do two songs from Ben Hutchesons self titled debut album. 

Let’s start with “Came From You”. The song features some beautiful acoustic guitar, light drums, piano and some female backing vocals. The term easy listening comes to mind. And when I say that, I mean it’s just so relaxing and satisfying to listen to. You don’t have to listen to hard to enjoy the music. You can just sit back and let the music take you away on this amazing journey. 

Bens style is very similar to the ginger phenomenon that is Ed Sheeran. Its very much an acoustic singer songwriter album, a genre that I particularly love! Ben describes his music as modern country which I can definitely hear a lot of throughout his record.

What I notice a lot in Bens voice is this very natural vibrato. It’s beautiful and something that lots of singers would kill to have, and this song really shows it off. His voice works so well with the female backing vocalist during the chorus, there’s lots of beautiful harmonies throughout, but the chorus is really something special. 

Next up, it’s “When I Come To Town”. I want to stress that Bens album is a beautiful combination of upbeat acoustic numbers, and some really graceful piano ballads. But I chose this song in particular because of how easy and fun it is to singalong. I remember Justin Hawkins from the band The Darkness once stress that a catchy chorus will turn a good song, into a great song. And that’s exactly what this song is. On only my second listen, I managed to hum along a little with the chorus, and in my opinion, there’s nothing better than when you find a song with a chorus you can well and truly belt, and Bens really hit the nail on the head here with “When I Come To Town”. The acoustic guitar, the little bits and pieces of electric guitar, and of course that really great piano sound really makes this feel like a mainstream country album recorded by a big artist. You wouldn’t believe that this is a debut album!

The country genre is slowly coming back into mainstream music, especially over here in the UK where I don’t think there’s been a country song that’s really captured the nation since “Achey Breaky Heart”. But with the recent success of Anne Marie’s “Unhealthy” storming its way to number one, it feels like a younger audience is slowly warming up to this modern country sound. So in my opinion, this is the perfect time for Ben to show what he’s made of. And hopefully, he’ll manage to continue captivating and introducing people to a genre that usually is relatively neglected.

Great work, Ben. And congratulations on the debut album!

4/5

Written by Jack Saunders