London Music Award Nomination Ben Howard: ‘...he doesn't just sell out shows (here and in Europe), he performs to a religiously devoted following in rapture to his every strum. They're less like gigs, more like prayer meetings’.

Ben Howard, the dreamy, Devon-born prince (or ‘Devonshire-born’, as his record company insist) of the nu-wave folk scene is a floppy-locked bambino with a silky voice to boot. However, forget any wishy-washy whining about girls called Sunbeam and the perils of hemp sandals: Howard’s folk music has fire and punch in its melodious belly. His debut EP, ‘The Old Pine’, already has over a million hits on YouTube, and his gigs have been known to provoke riotous hysteria. Not bad for a 24 year-old self-professed “surfer dude”.

The Guardian: ‘On Old Pine you join him as he breathes "smoke in his lungs" and stands there, "steady as the stars"... "More songs about home and the countryside," as he recently put it to New Band of the Day. Those songs, recorded in a converted barn in Devon, are full of hard-won wisdom ("Those who you see on the way up, you see on the way back down") that belie his age. Go and see him. He'll make listening to acoustic folk-tinged music feel like the first time.’