BENJAMIN STEWART

Slowly Slowly frontman Benjamin Stewart knows what people will be expecting from his debut solo album, Pushing Daylight – just another emo-punk rock guy doing what he always does, only with an acoustic guitar instead of an electric.

Pushing Daylight is not that record.

Sure, acoustic guitar is a key component of the album, and fans of Slowly Slowly will find Stewart’s voice and the music’s emotional richness reassuringly familiar. Rather than the main course, however, these are just ingredients in a kaleidoscopic journey through myriad moods, emotions and textures, composed without concern for commercial expectations, single edits or video treatments.

From the deeply personal opener “Time” – written on the morning of Stewart’s 30th birthday, and boasting an opening line indicative of the album’s themes (“I’m trying to work it all out”) – to the dynamic, dramatic “Cw2”; from Stewart’s achingly intimate vocal performance in “Projector” to the distorted blasts of “Take A Seat”, Pushing Daylight is the work of an artist following their muse wherever it takes them.

“I was able to go with my gut more than ever,” explains Stewart of the album’s creation. “I didn’t think once about shrinking the form of a song to make it more palatable. I was just going with gut feeling the whole time.”

Recorded in “dribs and drabs” over a two-year period with producer Simon Lam (Cub Sport, Kllo), Stewart’s long-held desire to make a solo album came to fruition during the COVID lockdowns. Determined to write a song a day over the period (although some of the album’s tracks predate the pandemic), the project brought with it an unexpected benefit. “I think I fell back in love with songwriting in a weird way,” he says. “Because when you write that much, you can’t write to a brief. And I started to realise I needed another avenue [outside of Slowly Slowly] for things that did not have a commercial focus whatsoever.”

That purity of purpose was reinforced by Stewart’s relationship with Lam, who, says the singer, “made me feel like a kid again with music. He was so willing to go down the road of a mistake to its absolute end path to make sure it wasn’t right”.

The safety of that partnership gave Stewart the confidence to bare the darkest parts of his soul on Pushing Daylight, the title of which comes from a lyric in a song that didn’t make the album. “Rosie” essays a harrowing time in the singer’s life when his relationship and health were failing, and COVID lockdowns were threatening his career (things started to improve not long after his dog Rosie came into the picture); “Projector” was written during a low period in which Stewart was recuperating from a health scare in hospital, “Take A Seat” is Stewart “at my most bitter”, a response to fans who’ve taken exception to Slowly Slowly’s desire to evolve beyond their emo roots.

The meaning behind closer “You Came Along” – “One of the most important songs I’ve ever written” – only revealed itself well after it was completed. “It started as a poem, and that line ‘you came along’ just kept coming. And I didn’t know what it was. And then I had my daughter, and when I listened to the song again I was like, ‘Oh my God, it’s about her.’ That’s what I was going through – this trepidation at having a child.”

You Came Along is also the name of a book of poetry Stewart will release to coincide with the album, featuring illustrations from the artist responsible for the record’s cover, Angelo Desista. He is one of several collaborators on the LP, with guitarist Mark Zito (Fractures), bassist Richard Bradbeer and vocalist Georgia Smith also helping sculpt the record.

Make no mistake, though – this is very much the unfiltered sound and spirit of Benjamin Stewart, an artist laying himself completely bare. “It’s my favourite thing I’ve ever made,” he smiles. “It has such a softness to it but then an evil underbelly if you dig a bit deeper, and it’s kind of dense but at the same time kind of sparse. I just love it so much.”

Record Label: Independent (distributed by MGM)

Booking Agent: Lonely Lands Agency

Publishing: Concord Music Publishing