''Benjamin Booker'' is the debut studio album by American musician

Benjamin Booker Benjamin Booker (born Benjamin Roderick Evans on June 14, 1989) is an American musician, singer, songwriter and guitarist. He cites the Gun Club, Blind Willie Johnson and T. Rex as influences. His music was described by the ''Chicago Tribune'' ...

. It was released on 9 August 2014 by

ATO Records ATO Records (or According to Our Records) is an American independent record label based in New York City. The label was established in 2000 by Dave Matthews and manager Coran Capshaw. ATO's roster includes My Morning Jacket, Brittany Howard, ...

and

Rough Trade Records Rough Trade Records is an independent record label based in London, England. It was formed in 1976 by Geoff Travis, who had opened a record store off Ladbroke Grove. It is currently run by co-managing directors Travis and Jeannette Lee and ...

Recording and production

The album was recorded in December 2013 in engineer/producer Andrija Tokic's all-analog Bomb Shelter in East Nashville, Andrija Tokic who has produced recordings for

Hurray for the Riff Raff Hurray for the Riff Raff is an American band formed in New Orleans in 2007 by Alynda Segarra, a singer-songwriter from the Bronx, New York (state), New York. As Segarra's project, the group originally performed different styles of folk music w ...

and

Alabama Shakes Alabama Shakes are an American rock band formed in Athens, Alabama, in 2009. The band currently consists of lead singer and guitarist Brittany Howard, guitarist Heath Fogg, and bassist Zac Cockrell. The band began its career touring and perfor ...

. The Bomb shelter was recommend to Booker as a place to record his album by Alynda Lee Segarra of

and by Sam Doores of The Deslondes. Booker chose The Bomb Shelter as the place to record his album, as he wanted to record the album in analog like he stated in an interview: " Booker arrived for the recording of the album with his only band mate, Max Norton, from Tampa, FL. The recording of the album was done using a RCA overhead on Norton’s kit, a Neumann U 87 on kick, and a Shure 57 on snare. Booker’s vocal chain usually included a Neumann U 67 with an Altec tube preamp and a UA 175 compressor, recording was often done with other instruments such as Sennheiser 441, in rotation to the main instruments used. the main guitars used for recording were 60s hollow-body Super Lynx Deluxe Vox, and an ’80s Ibanez Matsumoku Roadster. After recording started Tokic started bring in bass players and keyboardists to "flesh out recordings". The album was mixed on Tokic's MCI JH600 console.

Reception

Upon its release Benjamin Booker's self-titled album ''Benjamin Booker'' received critical acclaim. At

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

, which assigns a

normalized Normalization or normalisation refers to a process that makes something more normal or regular. Science * Normalization process theory, a sociological theory of the implementation of new technologies or innovations * Normalization model, used in ...

rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an

average In colloquial, ordinary language, an average is a single number or value that best represents a set of data. The type of average taken as most typically representative of a list of numbers is the arithmetic mean the sum of the numbers divided by ...

score of 81, based on 15 reviews, which indicates "universal acclaim".

Track listing

Personnel

Credits adapted from

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Mus ...

. *John Baldwin – mastering *Benjamin Booker – bass, composer, guitar, primary artist, vocals *Jem Cohen – bass, vocals *Eduardo Duquesne – bass, vocals *Mitch Jones – organ *Rob Jones – design *Peter Keys – Fender Rhodes, organ *Max Norton – drums, organ, mandolin, photography *Andrija Tokic – engineer, mixing, producer *Ben Trimble – bass, mellotron

Charts

References

{{Authority control 2014 debut albums Rough Trade Records albums