If you hadn’t figured it out based on the fact that we’ve posted on him twice in one day, or by the interview we did with him last Summer, I am a big fan of Ben Cooper, the singer and songwriter who embraces a DIY aesthetic by making weird, gorgeous, haunting folk music that he records inside a shed in his own back yard.
As Radical Face, Cooper has shown that he has a remarkable gift for storytelling, whether it be the kind of fable that’s rooted in his own history, in folklore, or — as is seemingly always the case with his music — a very thoughtful blend of the two. Such was the case with the first volume of a series of albums Cooper has planned for the near future, with the title The Family Tree. This past year saw the release of The Family Tree: The Roots, an LP that displays his talent for developing characters within songs as well as along the narrative thread of the concept record. We learned from exchanging questions and answers with Cooper last year that he is rarely not composing some kind of music, and it appears that there was plenty of overflow from The Roots. The first installment of a YouTube series of songs that weren’t on his latest record, but that would’ve fit just fine, is called “Bishop’s Song,” a murder ballad that’s sad and beautiful and gripping all at the same time. The video here is just a live take of the song, but it’s interesting to watch the intensity with which Cooper performs.
Radical Face is currently on tour in Europe, and as always Cooper has his finger in a number of different pies for 2012. Check out the video above, and listen to one of my favorite songs of 2011, “Ghost Towns” from The Family Tree: The Roots.
08. Radical Face – Ghost Towns by Marine_D
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–Sean
