There's Always Hope, There's Always Cabernet (Remastered & Expanded) by Benjamin Shaw - Audio Antihero/Old Money Records [AAH008D]

There's Always Hope, There's Always Cabernet (Remastered & Expanded)

Benjamin Shaw

A 20 track lo-fi album (1h 23m 55s) — released May 8th 2020 on Audio Antihero/Old Money Records

#alternative #lofi

Benjamin Shaw's polarizing debut full length sees a remastered reissue, expanded with an additonal eleven bonus tracks. Collecting the gorgeous and beguiling original album together with sessions from cult radio stations in England (Resonance FM / Dandelion Radio), Wales (The Waiting Room), Australia (Triple R FM) and the United States (WVUM) and more, this is a comprehensive look at who Benjamin Shaw was an artist at this time.

From an album steeped in dissonance and fuzz but overwrought with emotion and fragility (HULK) to wildly eclectic sessions which offer bursts of Electronica (Monster Munch), Neil Young channeling (Kick the Dog) and stripped and aching Lo-Fi (Home), Shaw stands out early as an eclectic and conflicted artist who works with limitations as though they were an ensemble in order to never play a song the same way twice.

Benjamin Shaw's music has received radio & press support from: BBC 6 Music (Tom Ravenscroft, Gideon Coe, Tom Robinson, Steve Lamacq), BBC Radio 3 (Late Junction), FM4 (Heartbeat / Der Sumpf), DIY Mag, CLASH Music, Gold Flake Paint, The Line of Best Fit, Drowned in Sound, The Grey Estates, The 405, Various Small Flames, The Dimestore Saints, For the Rabbits, Atwood Magazine, The Alternative, The Skinny and more. But the two quotes who have come the closest to getting the point with this beguiling artist are:

"Benjamin Shaw is an outcast, a loner, a maverick and a freak. All of these are compliments." - CLASH Music


"You wouldn't want everyone (or anyone else) to sound to like Benjamin Shaw but I'm delighted someone does." - The Line of Best Fit

A piece of work that could stand the test of time...The solitude is palpable. - Gold Flake Paint

It’s a reminder that some of the most powerful emotions can bloom from the simplest of raw moments. - Drowned in Sound

You wouldn't want everyone (or anyone else) to sound to like Benjamin Shaw but I'm delighted someone does. - The Line of Best Fit

Benjamin Shaw is an outcast, a loner, a maverick and a freak. All of these are compliments. - CLASH Music

Shaw may be pop's outsider - something many outlets noted upon his entry into the world of music - but with this release, he shows a faint desire to join the central fold. Perhaps it's due to resolute defeat, but still, that counts, right? - The 405

Imagine yourself sitting in an empty room. All the lights are off. You just had a fight with your mom. Your skin feels like it’s crawling with ants and your fingers are shaking from the coffee you had late in the afternoon. Your nails dig into the back of your head and you tug at your hair, wondering how hard you could pull before you finally rip it out of your skull. That’s what it feels like to listen to Benjamin Shaw. - Atwood Magazine

Though to focus on terrible feelings as a beginning and end is to miss the point.…To flatten this into the trope of anti-social introvert misses the true admixture of forces at work—the guilt, the shame, the dreams impossible to achieve. The promises that could never be kept, the nostalgia for things that never existed. - Various Small Flames

Puts you right beside its maker as he helplessly glares at himself in the mirror. But the music that soundtracks those dark moments is as beautiful as it is morose. - The Alternative

A chameleon of genres, the Melbourne-based Shaw has drifted through washes of shoegaze and fields of electronica, melding dissonant drones and folk affectations into an incredibly singular and raw brand of confessional music, its ennui palpable. - Dimestore Saints

Benjamin Shaw doesn’t so much wear his heart on his sleeve as beam it into the sky like a sort of troubadour superhero...It’s a rich and honest album, and one well worth exploring. - Echoes & Dust

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