Ben Grace Releases New Christmas Music
In a year when our traditions and assumptions for the Christmas season have been deeply challenged, Ben Grace delivers lament in two incarnations.
Released under his own name, THIS CHRISTMAS is the best of seasonal melancholy. Brightly familiar piano melodies guide the listener through Grace's disillusionment with the trappings of ribbons, carols, and burnout until we arrive at an exhausted hope in the true meaning of Christmas, complete with swelling harmonies and plenty of candle glow. THIS CHRISTMAS is Ben at his best - a beautiful, gentle, atmospheric, thought provoking song.
“This Christmas I’ve run out of things to give
My life no longer mine alone to live
Nothing left to package up with string
This Christmas I’ll give everything”
Ben’s second 2020 Christmas offering is as part of Story & Tune, the musical collaboration of Grace and his wife, poet Karyn Thurston. MAYBE BY NEXT CHRISTMAS is an ode to all who will spend this Christmas away from their friends and family, who will share family dinners over Zoom chats and face Christmas morning alone. Deliberately bare production and the all-to-familiar break behind Ben's vocal invite us into a beautiful and necessary mourning.
At the centre of Australian singer-songwriter Ben Grace’s impeccably crafted songs is a story of undoing. His music hovers in the space between lightness and the depths, wrestling its way through humour and melody to peel back the layers and reveal the naked truth of us. Through the specificity of his own deconstruction, Ben writes into our universal search for belonging, spiritual homecoming, and the desire to live seen and unashamed.
His solo work is the culmination of a 25 year trajectory through the industry that includes the release of over 50songs and collaborations, each a twist in the gradual unraveling that would lead him to produce under his own name.In the past two years, Ben has joined fellow artists to tour across 20 states and through the UK and Europe both as a solo artist and also a member of the acclaimed NINE BEATS COLLECTIVE, playing everything from house shows to historic venues, singing into the truth of our stories and holding them up to the light.
As well as being a gifted singer, musician and songwriter creating and releasing his own material, Ben is also a talented arranger, engineer and producer. He has recently helmed the production etc of the “Dance on the Deep” EP by USA singer/songwriter Heatherlyn and featuring Nine Beats Collective. He has also written, arranged and recorded the songs and music for an Australian children’s TV series and of course he is one half of the dynamic songwriting team ‘Story & Tune’ with his wife and poet Karyn Thurston.
