Album Review

Benjamin Wetherill – The Derby Ram

• 18th Feb 2008

It’s frankly unbelievable Benjamin Wetherill is a man making music in 2008. In Leeds. Immediately and enticingly he leads us to Derby marching and clapping through a carnival of percussion and brass and pure imagination. The Derby Ram takes overtly traditional English folk and puts it in a polka dot wash with Joanna Newsome.

It’s unusual to hear covers of songs about a small midlands town and its’ symbol of the male sheep, proving Wetherills talent for capivating his eclectic audiences with the romanticising and embellishment of seemingly lifeless subjects. Missing from the piece is a bass line, some might argue, however even the most hardened sceptics can’t fail to be whisped up and spun around by the magical plethura of saxaphone and harmonies.

On the flipside, the pureness and honesty of ‘I would love to’ is enough to convince us that theres a future for Wetherill in scribing his thoughts to music. His voice is less contived here than the title track, and reminds us that singer/songwriter doesn’t neccesarily mean dull, unimaginative whinging.