Acrpost: A Project of the Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres

Event Description

**GENERAL ADMISSION SEATING / 19+**


Over the course of a music career that, amazingly, now spans close to a quarter century, Ben Lee has quite literally grown up in front of our eyes — and our ears. And as with any lifelong journey, Lee’s musical trek has been dotted with unforeseen twists and turns, as well as explorations into unconventional and unexpected musical arenas. His latest statement, Love Is The Great Rebellion, his tenth studio album overall, at once signals both a revisiting of his past and an unequivocal rejection of it.

The record comes on the heels of two divergent releases, the 2011 concept album Deeper Into Dream and 2013’s meditative and experimental Ayahuasca: Welcome to the Work, and finds Lee wholeheartedly re-embracing the type of buoyant, insightful, and largely acoustic-guitar-based pop-rock that has long been his stock in trade. But Love Is The Great Rebellion is hardly a retread of tried and true Lee tropes; its break with the past is, in fact, baked into the album’s very title.

“It seems to me that love is always inviting us into the present moment,” the 36-year-old native of Sydney, Australia, explains. “And one of the prerequisites of love, whether it’s love in a marriage or for your child or for your craft, is that it can exist only in the present. So the reality of stepping into that moment involves letting go of the past. In a way, that’s a metaphor for my career. I’ve made a lot of choices that didn’t necessarily ensure my longevity, but somehow despite that I have longevity. I’m not the most famous singer in the world and I haven’t had the most hits, but I’m still here and making the music I want to make. And in order to be able to do that I’ve had to continually shed my past.”