Ben Heyworth – Creature EP

After some time out of the spotlight, Ben Heyworth returns with Creature, a three-track EP that feels deeply rooted in place, memory, and the offbeat corners of the human experience. 

Narrowboat opens the EP with a steady, calm pace and a lyrical focus that draws directly from life on Manchester’s historic canals. The song drifts with ease, like the vessel it’s named after. Heyworth’s vocals are smooth and unfussy, letting the words breathe. Lyrically, it’s filled with gentle melancholy and understated joy, evoking the rhythm of slow mornings, city fog, and small gestures that feel huge. It’s the kind of track that could easily slip into the background of a British indie drama — quiet, emotional, and completely believable.

Image of Roads switches things up with a fictional road trip that blurs the lines between real and imagined. Lyrically, it walks a fine line between narrative and commentary, poking at themes of illusion and disconnection. It wouldn’t feel out of place in a video game like Life is Strange or a film that plays with memory and distortion.

Then comes Creature Double Feature, the most surreal and theatrical track on the EP. This is where Heyworth lets loose. The lyrics paint a chaotic collage of people on the fringe — real or imagined — with references that shift from playful to unsettling. The track plays out like a spoken-word parade through a carnival of misfits, asking one simple question: who do you see when you look in the mirror? There’s a bit of Tori Amos weirdness in its DNA, and it works. This one could easily live in a dark indie film or something more experimental.

Creature feels personal and rooted, full of small but deliberate choices. Heyworth pulls from English folk influences, but filters them through a more modern, urban lens, giving the EP its own specific character. Whether or not you’re familiar with his earlier work, this new chapter sounds honest — and a little strange in all the right ways.