I Forget Where We Were

I Forget Where We Were is the second studio album by British singer-songwriter Ben Howard. It was produced by Chris Bond, who’s been collaborating with Ben since the very beginning.

Ben talked about the album on an interview to DIY magazine:

We never predicted the success of the first record and that just kept going and going and we kept touring and touring, and we knew one day that we’d have to make another album. There was also pressure in feeling that it was actually the right time to get in the studio and start making some different music.

[…]

I think that’s why the whole album is quite scatterbrain because there are so many different ideas and styles out there because I had quite a part in just working on instinct and things I felt, rather than having to stick to a definitive style.

Regarding the album title, he added:

It’s kind of about being aware of what is current and what is now after spending so much time in the music world. No-one really has a clue what’s going on musically or anything like that really, and it’s only with hindsight that you start to realise what has happened and what were the definitive moments in your life or in what’s going on around you. That was one side of it, but the other was my complete lack of understanding for anything over the winter. I struggled with a lot of stuff and just sort of lost my mind a little bit, so it felt like a fitting title and a kind of glimpse of madness.

Ben also mentioned how the band helped in the creative process of the record:

The whole album could’ve been songs like ‘End Of The Affair’, if it hadn’t been for the guys and everyone else. I was very much hooked into the delayed acoustic guitar sound that I was really enjoying.

On another interview, Ben was asked if I Forget Where We Were is an anxious album, to which the responded:

In many ways. It’s a lot more introverted than the first record, and now I realise it was actually quite mulled-over and quite thought-about, sometimes to its detriment, I think. It was really picked apart but it could have been quite a live, instrumental album with a lot more fury, but I think we – at times – made it quite concise. But in terms of anxious? Yeah, maybe. It breathes in the music. It was a strange winter for all of us… a big season of change.

To the London Evening Standard, a few months before the album released, Howard described it:

Not for teenagers. One of the main themes is anxiety. The past couple of years I was drinking a lot and I obviously had a lot of attention as well, so it was quite nice to go away and write a record just drawing on what I was feeling [about that]. I was quite anxious about a lot of things, so that’s kind of really pushed itself to the forefront in a few of the songs.