Ben Auld
- bizzarre
- 9 hours ago
- 3 min read
Ben Auld announces new album Loserdom via Safe Suburban Home Records & shares lead single "Red Bandana".
Ben Auld announces his new album, Loserdom, due 1st May via Safe Suburban Home (and US label Repeating Cloud). The record represents a big departure from Auld's earlier twee-folk sound, and is a louder and more ambitious shift toward blown-out power-pop.
Today, Auld shares lead single "Red Bandana" and says of it:
"I was trying to write something that captured the explosive pang that can happen when you reflect on places you’ve lived and people you’ve known.
That sudden reminder of a life you used to have, the impossibility of returning to it, and the pain of living in the past. It’s not so much about a specific place or person, although my time living in Bristol definitely influenced it. It’s realising you haven’t moved on while everyone else has.
It felt right to channel that tragic feeling through the comeback energy of 90s Neil Young and the grungier side of early Teenage Fanclub."
Loserdom was written during a time of personal upheaval for Auld, and marks "a celebration of the relief that comes when you accept your losses". Each song squeezes itself under the three minute mark with unhinged feedback, ripping "Bach-inspired" solos and a refreshing degree of unpredictability.
Ben Auld is a power-pop artist out of Norwich, UK. His band is made up of close friends that are active in the local scene. It features Duncan Baker on drums, Conor Etteridge on guitar, and George Witty on bass
.A fan of lo-fi, scrappy DIY bands like Guided By Voices, The Replacements and Bill Fox, Auld spent his early twenties learning how to write the perfect 2 minute pop song.
He also spent this time figuring out how to record to tape, and produce his own recordings. He moved to Bristol at 25 and befriended jazz musician and potter Nick Dover, who let him moonlight at his recording studio ‘Canyon Sound’. Over a two-year period he wrote and recorded the songs that would become Lemongrass (Earth Libraries, 2022), having performed and produced it entirely solo.
In his late twenties, Auld moved back to his hometown after struggling to replicate the community he had back in Norwich. At this point, he began performing the songs of Lemongrass with friends who encouraged him to play live.
“When I finished Lemongrass I sent it to my sister and she shared it with her boyfriend Conor and his housemate Duncan. They were super into it and so supportive.”
He also began playing drums in an alt-country band for the next few years, touring Northern Europe and the length and breadth of the UK, before focusing once again on his solo work.
Inspired by records like Grand Prix by Teenage Fanclub, Pinkerton by Weezer and Tony Molina’s Dissed and Dismissed, Auld wrote Loserdom during a period of personal upheaval. Moving cities, leaving relationships and quitting bands resulted in songs filled with resentment, shame and a sardonic, over-the-top admission of failure.
These songs are also a celebration of the relief that comes when you accept your losses. Auld first heard the term “Loserdom” said by Walter Becker in a Steely Dan documentary:
“I thought it was such a funny and tragic term and felt some affinity with it”.
Layered vocal harmonies and Bach-inspired guitar solos give the impression of a rock opera, while the arrangement and structure of these songs are concise and always conscious to not feel superfluous. Each song squeezes itself under the 3 minute mark with unhinged feedback, ripping solos and a refreshing degree of unpredictability.
The drums and rhythm guitars were tracked at Sick Room Studios in the Norfolk countryside, and were engineered by Owen Turner who owns and runs the studio. All of the remaining pieces (the solos, bass, keys and vocals) were then recorded over a period of almost a year at Auld’s home.
The record was mixed down to ¼” tape with Auld’s bandmate Conor Etteridge assisting with the mixing process. Auld reached out to Dylan Wall to master the record, having appreciated his work on Hotline TNT’s Nineteen in Love.
Loserdom is certainly influenced by melodic, harmony-rich American bands such as Weezer, Jellyfish and Big Star, as well as the 90s Glasgow power-pop scene. Auld channels the heartfelt lyricism of Norman Blake’s songs in Teenage Fanclub, as well as the absurd guitar wizardry of Tony Molina.
In doing so, Loserdom amps up the emotion, harmonies, and volume for an album that captures a rocky life transition with tongue-in-cheek drama.
