BenBen and Lily Desmond recently released their debut collaborative EP ‘White Elephant’. Working as a symbiotic musical entity, this EP is a culmination of the duo’s astoundingly unique marriage of riff-driven rock and folk magic. Known for his unforgettable high-tenor vocals and captivating lyrics, BenBen is offering up an effortless evolution of his signature soul-stirring sound with ‘White Elephant’ – we catch up with BenBen about all things White Elephant…
BenBen it’s an absolute pleasure! Your studio looks whacky – what’s a typical day like there?
I’m kind of amazed it took so long to make a video in the studio given how bonkers it looks. I found it in the early-mid 2010s and actually beat out CHVRCHES to take over the lease. For the longest time, it was run by my best friend James Schoen, who is the lead singer of a progressive metal band called Edensong that I moonlight in under the hilariously proggy stage name “T.D. Towers.” My passion as a producer is working with younger artists who have genuine creative ambition – they aren’t just bashing out tunes for fun or fashion as part of their social life. I’ve been lucky to be approached by people seeking a mentor figure. I should embrace being in my Obi Wan and Yoda phase, but I don’t do well in swampy isolation.
When does inspiration strike you most for your songs?
Whenever I break a string, it’s time to write. Rather than put a new string on, I find some crazy tuning and go until I break another string, then find another tuning and keep exploring until the guitar is useless. I try to write + record simultaneously when this happens, so that I’m bottling the moments while they are fresh. I have an album coming out next year where virtually every song on it was created in this way. That album will be called The Book Itself, and I got the title from one of those random spam eMails where it seems like some malformed AI is spewing poetic gibberish. I skimmed the eMail and the phrase “the book itself” stood out. I think the lyrics to the title track were completely written 24 hours after I got that eMail. A song called “K Kawaii” was written in London’s 229 venue on their K Kawaii piano.
What’s it like collaborating with the wonderful Lily Desmond? How did you two meet?
Lily has become a true family member to me. It feels like we’ve known each other for years though it’s hardly been even one. I still don’t totally believe her, but Lily says that I’m the first person she’s genuinely co-written music with, but you’d never know from hearing what we’ve made together. You’d think we’ve been doing it for years and years, when in reality we met last July, wrote 4 songs in late Autumn of 2023, and then did White Elephant in about two weeks the following January. The way our relationship has unfolded genuinely feels like it was written in the stars. It’s been almost like finding out you have a half-sister very late in life. As artists and as people, we are just cut from cloth that was made from the same enchanted textile mill. So yeah… just as I had finally worked up the nerve to step out as a solo artist, we found each other, and now it’s BenBen + Lily instead of just BenBen. Thank the lord. And it’s a 21st century gift, because we found each other on Instagram of all places. It’s a true karmic win for Mark Zuckerberg.
What was the creative process like in creating these tracks as a symbiotic entity?
I wish I could bottle the feeling of writing with Lily, because it’s very close to actual magic where it feels like two people are consciously in touch with otherworldly forces. The song ‘Sunniest Sediments’ was wild to make and it’s probably my favourite song in my whole catalogue of music. It was built on the incinerated carcass of a song I had produced but was never able to release – Lily and I both felt a call to somehow rescue its spark. So we pulled all of the melodic elements out, reversed the entire song, and completely rewrote it from the ground up. For some reason, the image in my head is of us both at a potters’ wheel, making something out of a piece of unbaked clay that had fallen apart, where we’re both looking at the same hunk of material and shaping it in real time super fast. There’s a line in there that is a nod to Rumpelstiltskin and spinning gold. I think we both went into a sort of fantasy land in our minds when working on this one, and the song whispered to us what it wanted. At some point it became clear to me that the song did not want me to write the majority of the lyrics. I knew it was a song about reclamation and being a guardian to very tender, fragile, ephemeral things, so I challenged Lily to write the lyrics and find a way to view tragedy from a place of optimism. That was new to her and I think it was the only instance of me putting my finger on the scale of her own process. Most of what you hear in the song is what she brought back, with my then refining it a little further. A moment like the violin solo is a good example of us writing melodically together – I genuinely have no idea who wrote what part of that solo (other than one violin run where I was like ‘shred, Lily!’ and she gave me a tiny tiny bit of shred) but it’s so incredibly gorgeous. The end of the song was written in this frantic moment where I think we were both feeling like we were really characters in this song, or even more than that, that our souls had gotten trapped in the song and needed to find a way out. There’s a release that happens at the end of that song, and it truly felt like Lily and I walked through a portal back into reality.
How do you find touring the UK? Anything different about the audiences here?
I am a fan of savoury pies, so I’m biassed. It seems that audiences appreciate indie artists who put in an effort, and write melodies that dare to be memorable and even somewhat pretty. People invest more in nights of music. “Venue hire” is not a concept in New York, and the promoter scene is fundamentally different. UK venues are more transparent about operating costs, and artists/promoters will underwrite those costs because an excellent night can turn a profit. I’m sure local artists have local frustrations, but it all seems much more sane to me. I am really hoping that Lily and I will get accepted to some UK festivals in 2025.
Tell us what the music scene is like in New York City?!
I started pushing as an indie rock musician when I was really young, and bands like Grizzly Bear, Yeasayer and Dirty Projectors were only a few years ahead of me. At that time, bands were exploring what was possible with rock music. I ran an art rock basement venue with a filmmaker friend of mine, and it was the wild west. These days, the scene feels really safe to me. It sometimes feels like a competition for who can be the most creatively casual, and there’s a fetishized punk nostalgia that I think might border on cosplay in some cases. It’s why I now play out surrounded by cellos and violins. I’m a rock musician, but I don’t even register as one to most people, so I’ve just leaned totally away from traditional rock instrumentation. One of my favourite art-rock bands, Colatura, just left town for Pittsburgh, and that was a loss for NYC. My dear friend Dima Drjuchin (a visual artist who did the album cover of Father John Misty’s Fear Fun) has a killer band called ‘Kissed By an Animal’ chock full of awesome players. There’s a power-trio called ‘Persons’ with three absolute monster musicians who all sing. ‘Monarch’ has a fire-breathing lead singer. But I rarely see bands stretching for something creatively new or wild. The last local rock band to really melt my brain was a band called ‘Lily and the Goddamns,’ and they were so good that I stole their singer.
Thanks so much for talking to us BenBen!
Listen To White Elephant on SPOTIFY | APPLE MUSIC
Find BenBen on INSTAGRAM
Find Lily Desmond on INSTAGRAM
