Both are London-born, acoustically driven solo artists. Both
released debut albums in the autumn of 2011, and now both have released new EPs
on the same label. They are even the same age. Yet somehow, in the last year,
Ben Howard has amassed five times more listeners on Last.fm, and a Mercury
nomination for best album. Marcus Foster doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page,
and has just finished a tour of America as a support act for, you guessed it,
Mr. Howard. How have two musically homogenous individuals diverged so palpably
in just one year? A swift EP comparison of Howard’s Burgh Island with Foster’s The
Last House makes everything clear.
