7/10
If you only know Ben Bostick as the hard-luck country storyteller behind 'Feeling Mean' or 'Hellfire', brace yourself. His new record 'Become Other' is the kind of stylistic about-face that makes you double-check the liner notes. Gone are the bar-room Telecasters and dusty highway tales; in their place are sweeping orchestral passages, industrial undercurrents, and a narrative arc closer to mythic opera than Americana. Imagine Trent Reznor writing a symphony with late-romantic grandeur and you’re in the ballpark.
Bostick says the catalyst was a demo of machine-made honky-tonk so convincing it fooled his own household. Faced with synthetic twang that could pass for the real thing, he decided to chase the one thing algorithms can’t fake: raw, cohesive purpose. The result is a 70-minute suite in four movements that traces a nameless protagonist from suffocating despair to transcendent release. Motifs from the sombre opening reappear until the closing prayer of gratitude feels both hard-won and inevitable.
'Movement I' plants us in 'The Tangle', a briar patch of grinding synths, dissonant strings, and whispered laments. 'Movement II' offers ill-fated escapism with trip-hop beats, slippery guitar loops, and narcotic electronics that sound inviting until they curdle at the edges. Then comes the brutal self-reckoning of 'Movement III', where metallic percussion collides with choral fragments, as if the hero is sparring with his own reflection inside a hall of mirrors. The finale erupts in luminous brass and layered voices, a surge of hard-earned catharsis that refuses cheap sentiment.
What’s most astonishing is his command of the materials. Every lyric fragment and sample is cross-stitched into the fabric of the whole. It recalls the thematic rigour of progressive rock epics, yet it never drifts into indulgence.
Some longtime fans may be bewildered by the absence of twang, but Ben Bostick isn’t abandoning authenticity; he’s redefining it on his own terms. And while 'Become Other' is an unapologetically ambitious listen, it rewards patience with moments of startling beauty and emotional clarity.
