Benjy Ferree Leaving The Nest by: Tim Clare Mon:19-Feb-07 Label: Domino Year: 2006 WB rating 59 out of 100

P. D. Eastman must have been a prophet. A Dr. Seuss protégé, Eastman grew as an author and artist at the same time as the likes of Messers Disney and Warner. Arguably the only of Eastman’s artistic offerings to gain more notoriety than Mr. Magoo was his narrative Are You My Mother? Through this succinct yet vitalized observation of identity, Eastman laid a creative path that has been followed by Benjy Ferree in 2007.

Benjy Ferree had aspirations of a bourgeoning career on the silver screen. It was acting that usurped Ferree’s time through his developing years, and prompted him to make the move to Hollywood. However, Hollywood is renowned for failing to acknowledge aspirations and after falling short of his dreams Ferree identified music as the next best thing. The actor-cum-musician model has yielded an amazing array of talent in years gone by: Goodrem, McLaughlan, Bassingthwate, McIntosh – and that’s Australia alone. However, the transition between these fields is not conducive for the development and incubation of the skills and ideas that are necessary to produce quality music. To succeed as musicians, actors need a quick fix. The aforementioned examples, whilst not musically successful, were able to use major label’s exorbitant promotional budgets and throwaway pop rubbish as their quick fix. Ferree, on the other hand, identified P.D. Eastman’s simple yet authentic message as his.

Leaving The Nest follows the first couple of steps along the path set out in Eastman’s 1960 work. Thematic similarities in Ferree’s title aside, Leaving The Nest reveals a low sense of identity and direction in the songwriting as he approaches this new creative outlet. Ferree has been displaced, and is wandering around listlessly looking for some inertia. Analogously, Are You My Mother? is a tale of a new born bird, dislodged from his nest, lost and unaware of who he is and where he came from.

A lack of attention to detail is one area where Ferree demonstrates his struggle with the unfamiliar surroundings. In the opening riff on ‘In The Countryside’ engineer Dennis Kane (of melancholy pop quartet Caligari) runs into the studio, and urges Ferree, patient and waiting, to start playing. Ferree starts the fret work, but Kane, flustered, forgets to press record for a couple of seconds, and half of the riff is lost. This mistake is repeated on closer ‘In The Woods’, where atmospheric hiss opens and closes the otherwise heartfelt, thoughtful album ending. Whilst Ferree may purposely be leaving this for ‘art’s sake’ it came across as an amateurish blunder. Ferree needs to keep things simple, and the adage: “two hands for beginners” rings true here.

Ferree can empathise with the bird in Are You My Mother? because he too is lost. The stylistic and sonic leaps of faith on Leaving The Nest are clear proof of his confusion. Opener ‘In The Countryside’ and title track ‘Leaving The Nest (It’s A Long Way Down)’ give cues to 1960’s Brit rock like T Rex, and Neil Young can be heard on ‘They Were Here’. Not content to settle on style yet, Ferree evokes balladry (‘The Desert’and ‘Private Honeymoon’), bluegrass tones (‘They Were Here’) and very “now” whistling (‘A Little At A Time’) all of which hinders the listener’s ability to identify a clear direction. Out of the confines of his “nest”, Ferree is exposed to too much influence. The baby bird thinks that he is a cat, a dog, a cow, a car, a boat, a plane and an excavator. Similarly, Ferree is trying to be too many things with the references that he makes on the album.

Stylistically, the album falls victim of doing too much. Not so lyrically, as the lyrical depth on Leaving The Nest is drawn from the Eastman model. Are You My Mother? is a children’s book, and accordingly the language is simple. Ferree doesn’t detract from this standard. ‘In The Countryside’ talks of loss through the use of “happy hands are in the air”, which would be at home on the set of Play School, and ‘A Little At A Time’ offers gems such as this outburst: “For my benefit try cry a little bit/For old time sakes give me some heart break/I put up a fight but I’m gonna be alright”. This wishy-washy exposition on the nature of breakup highlights the fact that Ferree is scrambling around, looking for something to write about. Not an adept lyricist, Ferree pleas with the people around him to ensure content. In fact, contrary to his actor background, Ferree is lost for words at times as “Oh no”, “Oh Yeah”, “La la la la” use endless repetition to fill in the gaps where his pen just wouldn’t travel.

‘Private Honeymoon’ offers the only hope amongst the barren lyrical landscape, delivering a tale befitting the medieval image used on the album’s cover. Ferree creates intrigue and affection through the characters detailed in this school hall shanty, and yet fails to breathe life into them. The listener does want to know who he’s singing about and why he is singing about them, but there’s not much to go by: the secondary character is a “big boy” and has “freckles” and “wooly red hair”, there is more description in the letters section of Mayfair, and it seems that characterisation is beyond Feeree. To continue down this path, he’d want to work a hell of a lot harder than he has here. 

Leaving The Nest isn’t all doom and gloom, and the radio play that it has achieved is testament to it. ‘In The Countryside’ will continue to be played because of its gleeful and carefree attitude. In fact, the album has an overall “nice” feeling; a feeling of happiness and glee. There is some nice fiddle work on ‘The Desert’, and Ferree can present a rich and layered sound. Also, there is a likeability here that gives an impression of boyish good looks through the vulnerability of his voice. It would not be surprising if the small screen lured him back to appear on the next season of the O.C – at least that’s how he sounds.

In Philip Eastman’s children’s book the main character is ousted from his nest, just like Benjy Ferree. Like the baby bird, Ferree is unaware of his origins and he wanders all over the place, lost and frightened. Eventually though, Eastman’s bird is helped back to the nest, having learnt his lesson and secured his identity. Ferree, however, doesn’t find baby bird’s redemption and Leaving The Nest will remain a directionless foray into the music world.