With little apparent background of single releases, and even less fanfare, Auckland singer-songwriter Ben Chavasse has delivered a self-assured debut album that delves into coming-of-age themes of institutional constraints and self-discovery. ‘Boxing’ is a diverse, entertaining collection of gently-voiced and thoughtful indie folk songs, in which Chavasse displays a penchant for introspective lyricism. He talked with Nur Peach about his music and messages.

Growing up in Tauranga, alternative folk/rock/jazz musician Ben Chavasse has been making music since he was a teen, and successfully. He won the Solo/duo category of Smokefreerockquest at 16, the second year he’d entered the competition.

“It was a real high point of my teenage years,” he says a decade later. “It set me on a path to keep going with music, because it gave me some sense of validation that I had some ability with songwriting.”

Moving to Tāmaki Makaurau for uni, Chavasse first completing a degree in journalism (despite, he says, never really having his heart set on it), before returning to gain a jazz music degree from the University of Auckland.

“I still had a real interest in songwriting and continued to write while doing that first degree. And afterwards I was at this point where I still had this passion for music, and wanted to pursue it. I felt like I needed to expand on my knowledge base, and I had a few people in my life who encouraged me to think about jazz school.

“I’m really glad I did it. It not only expanded my knowledge of theory, and gave me different tools with songwriting and guitar playing, but it also connected me with this big network of people in Auckland. I didn’t have an extensive network of musician friends, so going there was pretty huge for that.”

One of those university friends was guitarist Michael Howell (Skilaa), who ended up co-producing, engineering and mixing his debut album ‘Boxing’.

“I approached Michael towards the end of 2023. I just wanted to ask his advice, how he thought I might go about doing this, and he told me that he was working out of The Beths’ studio on K Road. He’d been renting it for a while when they were overseas. And he just said, ‘Let’s do this. Let’s record some songs together.’ And I was like, ‘Great, that sounds perfect!’”

Meeting up as a production team, Howell initially helped refine the tracklist and arrangements.

“The whole process of making this album has been a real journey, figuring out how to collaborate with Michael and how to produce. I think there are lots of parts of the process that I wasn’t familiar with before I started, and I thought I had a better handle on than I did! Actually starting it, I kind of realised a few of my shortcomings, and so I think it took a lot longer than I anticipated.”

With Chavasse singing plus taking the electric, slide and acoustic guitar duties, another fellow jazz school graduate, Finn McNeill (Psycho Gab), played drums across the album. Howell also played bass on most of the album’s 10 tracks, Beth Britten replacing him on double bass for some. Minju Kim and Kat Tomacruz both added cello, and Chisato Aida was a regular contributor on violin, with other musicians adding saxophone, clarinet, viola and bv’s. The recording process has taken up the almost two years since his graduation.

“We sort of just had a series of meet ups where we workshopped some of the songs, then live tracked the guitar, bass and drums in the studio. At first I needed a bit more direction with how we might start an arrangement. As I got more confidence I sort of took the last few songs away myself and worked on them at home, doing rough demos using MIDI instruments that sounded really crappy – and built up the songs from there. Once I came up with those parts and wrote out all the charts, we did overdub recordings with the extra musicians that we needed to play the parts.”

The resulting debut album contains songs from throughout Chavasse’s young adult life, the oldest written back when he was 16.
“It spans a lot of the time that I’ve been writing songs – my early teenage years up until my first year of jazz school. It’s about eight years, and I’m 26 now, so that’s 10 years since the first song was written!

“I wasn’t exactly sure how it was going to happen. When I first started this project, I knew I had enough songs for an album, and that the songs I’d been writing kind of felt like they came from a similar world or something – at least from a similar kind of process of thoughts. It’s sort of just been a massive process of trial and error and figuring out how to record, and who to work with, and needing certain catalysts along the way to help that process.”

The album’s folky first-released single Letdown, is a thoughtful and strong opening track, the restrained snare shuffle and Chavasse’s finger-picked guitar allowing his understated voice to make a statement of artistic maturity that belies the fact it was written when he was just 19. The song is about that moment of growing up, a point of realisation that people you look up to can’t always provide the answers.

Influences cited include Tiny Ruins, Tom Waits, Joanna Newsom, Japanese Breakfast and Alex G. It’s clearly evident that Chavasse puts a lot of thought into his lyrics.

“I care a lot about the words, and I think even if I have some kind of harmony or guitar part that I really like, I struggle to think of it as a good song if the lyrics aren’t interesting. I just try and write lyrics which I find inspiring in some way.”

Coming-of-age is a prominent theme across the album, especially in relation to discovering what you believe.

“It’s sort of placing the experience of ‘coming-of-age’ in contrast to environments or worldviews, or experiences that you feel at odds with, the kind of stifling messages that get reinforced in high school and religious institutions. Trying to find a sense of self, and figuring out your place in the world. Or your worldview, in environments where you feel like the views that are guiding you, or the people who could help you figure that stuff out, are not necessarily people you would look to, to find that sense of self.”

The album title, ‘Boxing’, has a double meaning related to this idea.

“I was trying to find some kind of word or term or expression to embody those themes. The thought of being boxed in came up quite early on, and I changed that to ‘Boxing’ because it still contained that idea, but it was also this idea of pushing back, and I think that’s present on the album too.

“This idea that you can be faced with environments or worldviews that you disagree with, but it’s important to resist those, to continue forging your own path and finding your footing. Even if it is at odds with what you’re hearing, or what you’re surrounded by.”

That lyrical purpose fits with his musical creativity as well.  

“I love music that is melancholic, but with some kind of sweetness or edge. It helps me connect with feelings I donʼt find easy to access in other ways,ˮ he says.

Chavasse’s next outing may be more jazz-influenced as a product of his university study. We hear the beginnings of this degree-led influence in closing track Better, also the last song written for the album.

“It felt right to put that one last, because it definitely has a few more jazz influences – a lot more extended chord voicings and seventh chords. It was at this point where I’d learned a bit more about jazz harmony, and I was like, ‘I want to try and use this to write a song’. It’s got some quite standard jazz harmony in there, but I think I still wanted to write a song which felt like a song that I would write.”

Since recording Better Chavasse has continued to experiment.

“I’ve been working in different tunings or just trying to play voicings which I haven’t played before, or I’d have to work out what they are retrospectively. The reason is maybe that it takes my mind off the sort of thing that I would naturally go to next. I try to just follow my ear and the emotional pull of something, rather than what I might instinctively go to if I just played some chord voicings that I’m more familiar with.”

It may not be long before we see the full manifestation of this experimentation. Chavasse is excited to get to work on another album and pursue new material.

“The process of learning while collaborating with other musicians is a humbling and inspiring and motivating experience. I would love to keep doing that. And I would love to keep developing my knowledge and my skills in production and songwriting and all aspects of the process of making an album.

“And I’d love to think that I would be able to help out other people who are in my shoes when I started this process. Artists who need a bit of guidance, or advice, or support in doing this crazy thing of making an album.”