After several years of nonstop touring—having played more than 1,000 live shows since the release of his last album—Canadian artist Ben Caplan is set to release Birds With Broken Wings in the UK on 4 March 2016 via Coalition Music/ADA.
The album marks the long-anticipated follow-up to his 2011 debut LP, In the Time of the Great Remembering.
Having toured extensively in North America throughout the Autumn of 2015, Caplan will also come to the UK in January where he plays a series of intimate dates with his band ‘The Casual Smokers’. The tour will find the artist performing at Manchester’s Gullivers on 8 January 2016.
“I think that a new album was probably due years ago,” admits Caplan. “But whether or not I would have been able to pull it off the way I wanted to, that I don’t know. I wanted to take my time and honor the process. There was a lot to learn. I wanted to make an album that was complex but with space for anyone to find their way into it. I wanted to collaborate with people who inspire me and find space for unexpected things. It takes time.”
Produced by Montreal rapper/hip-hop/klezmer artist Josh “Socalled” Dolgin and mixed by Renauld Letang (Feist, Manu Chau), Birds With Broken Wings features some 35 guest musicians and collaborators on 12 tracks recorded over the course of three intense and productive weeks of 10-hour days in the studio. “With this record I wanted to try to work with all of the dream situations and dream people,” Caplan says. “I wanted to explore the things I could never possibly pull off live, but are exciting possibilities in the studio.”
This has led to an album in which Capland has diversified his music, mixing up the more brash-blues style he is known as a live performer for, with the equally as captivating sweeter songs he has added in, all whilst keeping the dark undertones to his songwriting.
While quite different in its production from In the Time of the Great Remembering, the ultimate focus of Birds With Broken Wings remains steadfastly on Caplan’s vocals, songwriting and storytelling, which have already won him several Canadian awards—including Nova Scotia’s 2012 Entertainer of the Year and the East Coast Music Award for Rising Star Recording of the Year for 2013. He has shared stages with acts ranging from Grizzly Bear and Dirty Projectors to The Staves and Blondie, and played major festivals around the world including Glastonbury in 2013.
Ben Caplan performs at Manchester’s Gullivers on 8 January 2016.
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