Album Review: Near Future by Benjamin Shepherd
Listeners often approach a new album from a familiar artist with a quiet, unspoken expectation: growth. Whether or not they realize it, what they truly want is to hear the artist push further, to stretch the boundaries of their sound without losing what made them captivating in the first place. Every record carries the possibility of being the artist’s most ambitious work yet, though the success of that ambition is always subjective. What resonates most isn’t simply the pursuit of something different, but the pursuit of something that still feels undeniably theirs. Without that foundation of authenticity, ambition can feel hollow, especially when the pursuit of something new comes at the expense of an artist’s singular charm. Breaking the mold is vital, even abandoning it entirely can yield brilliant results. But the voice behind the music needs to remain intact. It’s why so many folk-rock bands of the 2010s struggled to translate their identity into arena-ready anthems, or why electronic acts of the 2000s often stumbled when shifting to more organic instrumentation. The risk is always in the reach, whether the artist is reaching to expand their vision or simply to fit into something they were never meant to occupy.
For Benjamin Shepherd, ambition might seem like a foreign word, or at least an ill-fitting one. Shaped by his time in New York’s anti-folk scene, where authenticity mattered more than pretense, his music has always prioritized direct expression over grand gestures. The kind of songwriting that hopes to sidestep conversations like this altogether, discussions of scope, legacy, or artistic trajectory. And yet, with Near Future, ambition radiates from every corner of the record. Whether conscious or not, it’s undeniable. The album opens with the longest song in Shepherd’s streaming catalog to date, a distinction it holds for only nine tracks before being eclipsed by the penultimate cut. That alone signals a kind of audacity, but the depth runs much deeper. Across eleven tracks, Shepherd crafts a work of striking range, from wry, prosaic storytelling to delicate balladry, from homespun intimacy to flickers of experimentalism. It’s a record that feels like a true arrival, not because it abandons the sensibilities he’s built over three previous albums, but because it distills them into something sharper, richer, and undeniably more ambitious. By the time the final notes fade, the album leaves behind plenty of lingering emotions–vulnerability, gratitude, a quiet kind of resilience–but it’s that ambition, quietly humming beneath the surface, that leaves the deepest impression.
His past records have always satisfied that quiet craving for growth, evolving naturally and subtly from one to the next while uncovering new lyrical and musical terrain. Each album feels like a steady step forward, expanding his vision without leaving his core behind. Exactly what you would want from an artist. What sets Near Future apart is how it circles back to those familiar landscapes–revisiting the ground he’s already walked, but with a different stride and a subtly altered sense of direction. Opening with “So Far To Go” illustrates this perfectly. It’s not a style Shepherd has abandoned, but it’s one he hasn’t used to set the tone since “Dad,” the brief yet poignant opener from his 2014 debut Eleven For The Road. While he’s kicked off albums with longer tracks before–2019’s Hold The Line opened with the nearly five-minute “Friday Fantasy“–pairing length with this stripped-down, introspective approach is something new. In a way, starting with “So Far To Go” combines two distinct lead-off choices from his past, creating a familiar yet strikingly different resonance that signals both reflection and reinvention.
And speaking of length, there’s “Come Away,” the sprawling ten-and-a-half-minute centerpiece that makes the opener feel like a digestible conversation by comparison. Steeped in a hazy, dreamlike narrative, the track unfolds like a literary epic set in the American wasteland–a parable of a weary cowboy and a restless woman drifting through a landscape of missed chances and unfulfilled desire. It’s the kind of song musicians fantasize about pulling off, the long-form effort stitched together in parts and sections, unified by a mile-high perspective and steeped in lyrical doubleplay. The refrain “Come away” acts as both invitation and warning, beckoning toward an undefined escape where the promise of something better is clouded by the weight of what’s left behind. “Ohh, the best laid plans / Lay in rocky rows along the land,” Shepherd sings as the song swells under its own aspiration, the arrangement churning forward with a deliberate momentum and crafty experimentation that pushes the track into truly indelible territory. Remarkably, it reaches that peak well before the runtime expires, leaving the song’s final stretch to feel less like a necessary culmination and more like a generous coda–the cherry on top of an inventive new sundae.
Extended song length isn’t what defines Near Future, though–it’s more of an early signal that something different is at play. Shepherd’s diverse approach to style and genre has always made his albums a worthy listen, but Near Future blows the doors wide open. Across its eleven tracks, the record traverses a sonic landscape broader than anything he’s attempted before–shifting from modern folk to Bakersfield redux to slowcore within its first three songs alone, an expanse none of his records came close to approaching.
All of this while Shepherd upended his own recording process, tracking everything to tape himself and handling all of the engineering, save for the mastering. Typically, a shift like this warrants a retreat to solitary sounds or styles–a lo-fi, inward-looking project. Instead of scaling back though, Shepherd blows the gates off what he’s done with a full team behind him. Yet even in this self-sufficient approach, he’s not alone. Many of the collaborators who’ve shaped his past work return, such as Charlie Glenn and Kevin Guild, who each make solitary appearances here rather than the full album residency they enjoyed on his previous record, This Was Supposed To Be Temporary. Still, Shepherd kept this one close to his chest while recording at Mostly Gin, his home studio, a space that allowed his inner music to come out as fully realized as it might have ever been.
Yet it’s not that Near Future needs to be appreciated simply within the larger context of Shepherd’s work. Richmonders will take glee in the way he immerses himself in geographical touchstones early on, naming a song “Varina Lullaby” and opening another with a nod to I-95 gridlock. Lyrical enthusiasts will beam at the playful repartee of “Words,” while those in search of their next earworm will find themselves looping “The Lonely Racer” without the slightest inkling of heading to the raceway. Shepherd is biting in some instances (“They won’t stop til they got\ Jesus himself on the run” from the cautionary “Not Me”) while lovingly tender in others (“Without a care, to be so bold\ To take a walk through the marigolds” in the wistful “Marigolds”). Both modes feel natural, each lyric delivered with the kind of measured conviction that makes Shepherd’s observations–whether sardonic or sentimental–feel lived-in rather than projected.
But Shepherd does project here–fully and without reservation. Near Future is his most exposed record to date, a window into a musical mind that’s only sharpened with time–tuned, refined, and subtly reshaped to let his words bear greater weight. That openness courses through the album’s resonance, binding tracks like “Doldrums,” “Come Away,” and “The Tides” with a lyrical throughline. Lines like “If the moon\ Pulls on the sea\ Then it surely\ Pulls on you and me” slip seamlessly across genres, with the music bending to serve the words rather than the other way around. It’s the same instinct that’s guided Shepherd’s best work in the past, but here, it feels more assured, more expansive, more willing to chase a song wherever it wants to go.
Near Future isn’t the record we might have expected from Shepherd. It’s not the one he was always meant to make. Those types of narratives faded away long ago when he chose to follow his own artistic compass. Instead, Near Future stands as something far more compelling: a fearless extension of everything he’s been building, stretching his craft without severing the core of what makes his music so singular. By the time the aching final notes of the record’s epilogue “The Tides” fade, the album’s title feels less like a hazy suggestion and more like a quiet declaration. This is the sound of an artist fully occupying his own orbit, mapping out where he’s been while leaving the future wide open. Wherever Shepherd goes next, Near Future stands as both invitation and testament–proof that chasing your own voice will always yield something worth hearing.
Near Future is available now on all streaming platforms. To stay up-to-date with Benjamin Shepherd, make sure to bookmark his website or follow him on social media.
