Grown Up Love
Self-Released, 2021
9/10
The southern one man band Ben Bostick has built himself an impressive career that started with busking on the Santa Monica Pier, and his constantly evolving song craft is even more admirable on Grown Up Love, where he soundtracks the circumstances of his family currently navigating life with a child diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder.
“Different Woman” starts the listen with some playful percussion as Bostick’s smooth pipes complement the bouncy bass and brass climate, and “Shades Of Night” follows with a calmer approach of soulful, bluesy song craft that benefits from brushed percussion and gentle guitar.
The middle tracks are among the best, and include the pretty, folk influenced “The Diagnosis”, where Bostick’s wordplay is nothing short of sublime, while “Under The Palmetto Moon” enters country territory with subtle but effective horns. “The Myth Of Translation”, the album highlight, then shows Bostick in a particularly frisky mood amid strategic backing vocals and peppy horns.
Approaching the end, “Like Old People Do” offers a bare and poetic display of timeless singer-songwriter prowess fueled by a picked guitar, and “It Seems Like Only Yesterday” follows a similar path for a slide guitar friendly finish that’s about as romantic as anything you’re likely to hear anywhere.
An album of love songs isn’t hard to find, but few are quite like this, and though the situation is quite serious, Bostick is also capable of addressing the mood with playful moments of mature, heartfelt and sincere songwriting, much like what has comprised his career up to this point.
Travels well with: Justin Wells- The United State; Adam Carroll- I Walked In Them Shoes