“Spoke For What I Knew”: When Honesty Hurts More Than Silence

“Spoke For What I Knew” by Ben Aubergine is nostalgia bottled up and compressed into audio form. Written in 1998, the years behind the work come through in every lyric and note of the song. There is a gentleness to the instrumentation that you almost float into, but the song never really lets you settle in. There is a tension that never fully dissipates, and there is a sadness to the track, but it is a low-key form of both. It is restraint that Aubergine relies on to hold the track together. The emotions in the track feel aged; like the singer took out an old journal and read the pages over, letting a wave of reminiscence wash over him and then putting it back in the drawer, so as not to get it all over the other things. The production on the work is warm and intimate. You can hear that the work was finished off in his own home studio, and each individual layer has purpose.

“Spoke For What I Knew” by Ben Aubergine is steeped in lyricism that capitalizes on that slight emotional imbalance that often permeates relationships. He sings of a disconnect between two people, no matter how pure the intentions may be. There is a line of the track that comes off almost as a sharp intake of breath before the breakup. Words that are meant to be honest and not malicious, but are sometimes harder to hear than we would like. Aubergine doesn’t need to build up emotion to wring more feeling from the song. He lets the song end, and the space between each line is as purposeful as his words. It is that quality that makes the track come across as genuine. It doesn’t need to be more than it is. It is truth spoken in a low, steady tone.

There is, however, an incredible story that is the subtext behind “Spoke For What I Knew”. Ben Aubergine left music behind for years and instead became a doctor, a husband, and a father. But instead of leaving music in the past, he saved it and treated it almost religiously. He is now finding time to revisit those old songs and give them the endings they needed. “Spoke For What I Knew” is living proof that after all that time, he is right; time doesn’t change how things make us feel. It just changes how we speak of them.

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