If you know Ben Howard, it is most likely that you know him from his first album, the Brit-award winning breakthrough that was Every Kingdom. It was an album that perfectly encapsulated Howard’s vibe: a free-spirited surfer who spends his days with his toes in the sand and pine-needles in his hair. It was decidedly folkie, the deftly-plucked guitar strings and happy choral harmonies evoking images of long summer days. Noonday Dream is the opposite, a far cry from the sounds that initially shot him to fame.

It is clear that the only faint shadow of similarity between Howard’s old and new music is his use of the natural world to communicate and convey emotions

The performance at the Symphony Hall starts with the jarring buzzing-bee noise that signals the start of the song ‘A Boat To An Island On The Wall.’ The 7-piece band that accompanies Howard on stage is, with the quietly powerful opener, given the chance to immediately show its skill, building layer upon layer of sound, a growing intensity that envelops the audience. The stage is not anything fancy, the focus is meant to be solely on Howard and his voice and the music – and it is. The only kind of stage production is the strobe lights and the big screen behind Howard and the band upon which various images of flowers and storms and fields appear, coinciding with the different moods of each song. In this way, it is clear that the only faint shadow of similarity between Howard’s old and new music is his use of the natural world to communicate and convey emotions.

Howard continues strongly, the next two songs (‘Towing The Line’ and ‘Nica Libres at Dusk’) being the other standouts from the album. But, with the completion of arguably the three most enjoyable songs so soon into the set, the audiences interest begins to fade. For the remaining one hour and a bit of Howard’s performance, there is a change in the mood of the audience. There is a lot of fidgeting and shuffling and whispering around me, and people, often  in large groups, stand from their seats to go the bar, obviously not feeling like they would be missing out on anything. Admittedly, this album is self-indulgent – which makes the performance equally so. Howard mumbles into the microphone mid-set that the latest album was ‘basically a love affair with [him]self.’ He is not trying to please anyone but himself with this music.

There are lots of times during the performance when Howard visibly becomes lost in the music, in his own world

There are lots of times during the performance when Howard visibly becomes lost in the music, in his own world, and it feels more like we as the audience are watching a chilled-out, private recording session rather than an exciting, engaging show. For ‘Towing The Line’, he does not even face the crowd, instead choosing to look to the side, hunched over his guitar. He does give a vague nod to the fan-favourites with a stripped back version of ‘Everything’ from his first album, but it is not really the same when it is done only with a drum machine. No amount of calling or cheering from the crowd gets Howard to give in, not even for the speedy encore, which he makes his newest single for 2019, ‘Heave Ho’.

I can imagine quite a few people left the show feeling dissatisfied. But Howard never sold this tour as a best-of, so is it the audience’s own fault for feeling so unfulfilled, having expected something from the show that Howard gave zero indication of giving? Arguably, musicians have a sort of responsibility to meet their fans halfway – not all of the time, but enough to satisfy the masses, maybe, to throw in a few crowd-pleasers here and there. But Howard has never done that, and by the looks of it he isn’t going to start, either. He has a vision for each album he puts out, and he sticks to it like glue. Whether you enjoy it or not, I think, is a matter of whether, as a fan, you choose to adapt with Ben Howard as an artist, or remain a lover of his older works. Ideally, we – and Howard – can do both.