I buy a lot of music by a lot of artists, but every now and then something new comes along that I fall for at another level. That’s how it is with this next artist.
Disc 1921 is…I Will Rise
Artist: Benjamin Tod
Year of Release: 2017
What’s up with the Cover? Benjamin Tod walks on the wrong side of the tracks, or at least the wrong side of that fence with a sign that reads, “Keep Out of Rail Yard – No Admittance”.
How I Came To Know It: I discovered Benjamin Tod in 2024 through his album “Shooting Star” (reviewed back at Disc 1789) and I’ve been digging backward through his discography ever since.
How It Stacks Up: I have five Benjamin Tod albums (including his latest, bought earlier today). “I Will Rise” comes in right in the middle at #3.
Ratings: 4 stars
Authenticity is a rare gift, and never more important than in folk and country music. On his first solo album away from the Lost Dog Street Band, singer-songwriter Benjamin Tod is as authentic as it comes.
“I Will Rise” is ten songs that wring every drop of heartache, regret, and anguish of out Tod’s hard-lived experience. While you listen you will both feel connected viscerally to these stories, and at the same time unworthy of them. Yes in one way we live through Tod’s artistry but in another it is only a shadowy reflection on the cave wall of the true event.
Take “Using Again”, where Tod describes falling off the wagon and the miserable self-loathing that emerges from it. Opening with:
“I'm living low down and I am using again
I'm hating my name cause I am cursed like my kin
And if I should see you before I am condemned
I hope you're deceived by the webs that I spin
“I wish I was who I appear
'Cause I despise the man in the mirror”
The song offers no respite from beginning to end, its final chorus a recognition that death approaches, and hell soon thereafter – its final notes an unresolved melody offering no surcease.
Without Tod’s authentic delivery songs like “Using Again” wouldn’t work, but his tortured warble that peals out of Tod like he’s been cursed by the gods to be chained to a rock and forced to shout his doubts and sins into the wind.
The arrangements could not be simpler, with nothing but Tod’s exceptional vocals and a single steel-stringed guitar, played with a heavy pick that twangs and twists through the song’s chord progression. Tod plays like he sings, with a deliberate and profound honesty.
On “I Will Never Be Around” Tod doubles down on hopeless, noting that he “would pick a shallow grave over an empty cell”. Yeesh, and the way he sings it makes you feel like either or both outcomes are imminent. Great stuff, but not exactly Gilmore Girls.
On a record like this, you take your joy where you can find it. There are plenty of songs where Tod’s romantic side comes out. Yes, even here he often comes at his subject matter from a dark place, (“Hungry For You Blues”, “Busted Love” and the classic road-trip argument, “Gasoline”) but at least we find an opportunity to explore the parts of our heart that hurt in a good way.
The record’s final track, “I Will Rise” is an anthem to the downtrodden, and while continuing to pull no punches, the record’s final salvo is one of hope and endurance. Here, Tod brings it all together. He sings of lost love and heartache, of hands shaking from alcohol withdrawal and the weariness of burning the candle at both ends; I expect a nod to the “all-in” approach to his songwriting, which leaves no stone in his troubled soul unturned.
And yet, at each admission of struggle, or depression, almost every other line is the refrain of “but I will rise.” This song is just as dark as any on the record, but we are left with a mantra of stubborn resilience, a call to rise above challenges, no matter how profound. If – like me – you like your messages of hope to be unvarnished and maybe even a little negatively motivated, then this song – and this album – are for you.
Best tracks: Using Again, Out of Babylon, Who I Am Ain’t Who I’ve Been, I Will Never Be Around, I Will Rise
