Noonday Dream

It’s Ben Howard doubling down on ambiance, creating a collage of moments both fleeting and everlasting while choosing the art of the craft over the simplest path to accolades. It may take more time to appreciate, but it’s a masterclass of songwriting that will likely dictate the future direction of his music.

The result is a meditative set full pf surprises, and songs that haunt. [Aug 2018, p.90]

Each track comes shrouded in glitchy systems noise and Eno-esque ambient drones. The best moments maintain Howard's way with a melody. [Aug 2018, p.28]

Howard's evolving sound is fast becoming distinctively his own. [Jul 2018, p.118]

Noonday Dream can feel ephemeral at times, but never is it unpleasant, even when it's fishing for emotional truth in unstable waters. Introspection rarely feels this inclusive.

His third album is an engrossing, deeply atmospheric trip, helmed by seven-minute monster ‘A Boat To An Island On The Wall’, that serves as a repositioning as well as a new highlight.

Complex, surreal and divine. Noonday Dream is Ben Howard's best work to date.

The result is not a focused or sharp record--but it doesn’t need to be. The allure of Noonday Dream comes in its willingness to swell and expand, before Howard sits up and starts kicking, slowly but precisely, to steer the track in a new direction.

For all the times where Noonday Dream gets, well, a little too dreamy, "Nica Libres at Dusk" demonstrates further possibility for Howard's songwriting. If he's able to marry his chops with acoustic instruments to his penchant for electronic and ambient music, without letting one take precedence over the other, he'd be on his way to a masterpiece that, at their best, each of his three records thus far has hinted at.