Ben Kessler's "Even When You're Home" Is All About Acceptance [Premiere + Q&A]
Everyone's headed home soon. With the holidays fast approaching, people everywhere are abandoning their cramped apartments and squeezing into even smaller plane seats on a mission to get home. But even so, sometimes home isn't where the heart is. Ben Kessler's newest single "Even When You're Home" channels that feeling. He's joined forces with Mossflower Pictures again in an effort to visualize the sentiment.
"Even When You're Home" explores a nuanced paradox, losing himself in a space perfectly designed to make him feel most comfortable, his home. Softly, Kessler slips into a gleaming falsetto as he grapples with both identity and loneliness. It's a state of emotion we all know, feeling lonely in a crowded room. Still, it's something we cheat, we publicly pretend the feeling doesn't exist. Kessler's venturing into new territory with "Even When You're Home" deciding to both acknowledge and accept the feeling.
"Even When You're Home" is a song about acceptance. Kessler sings in the chorus, "Maybe it's okay to feel alone / Even when you're home." He establishes a mellowness within the song choosing to embrace a much more acoustic foundation production-wise. By incorporating graceful synths that seem to slide ear from to ear, Kessler creates a breezy uneasiness that soundtracks his exact mood. In the visual he flips the concept of home, creating his own crooked version of the solace inducing setting under the fall trees. His art is hanged sideways. He seems confident but a little lost. He's effortfully trying to be okay, with not being okay.
We got Kessler out of the studio for just under five minutes to ask him a handful of quick-fire questions to get to know the man behind the art.
Ones To Watch: What's the first show you saw live?
Ben Kessler: Jesse McCartney in 2006. It was lit.
OTW: If your music was a color, what color would it be?
Kessler: Cyan. It's not blue and it's not green - it's familiar but also kinda weird. At first you're like "I know this color" but then you're like "oh wait what color is dis?" I want my music to be familiar enough to get rope you in and weird enough to make you stay.
OTW: Tell us something no one knows about you?
Kessler: I talked to Britney Spears on the phone when I was in kindergarten. She shaved her head a week later…
OTW: Whose backyard did you shoot "Even When You're Home" in?
Kessler: Mine :) Why pay for a studio/lighting when I can use my backyard/the sun for free?
OTW: In what place do you really feel most at home?
Kessler: In the arms of Louie (my dog). My view rn:
OTW: You poured a big glass of wine at the beginning of "Even When You're Home," but what's your actual drink of choice?
Kessler: I don't have enough facial hair (or money) for it - but straight bourbon is my drink of choice.
OTW: Those Reeboks you slipped on have me thinking... do you have another pair of shoes you've worn too much that you should probably throw out, but just can't part with?
Kessler: That very pair has since been thrown out. But that is the only brand/model of shoes I wear - I'm currently wearing my third pair. $43 on Amazon!
OTW: Who are your Ones To Watch?
Kessler: Have you heard of Harry Styles? (laughs) There are some artists in Nashville I looove. Camden (he has an unbelievable project coming in 2020) and Theo Kandel. I've also been loving Kyle Lux, Maude Latour - I think they're both about to pop off in a big way.