Ben Lee Previews Album With Warm New Single & Unveils November Tour Dates

Lauded Australian singer-songwriter Ben Lee is ramping up for a massive finish to 2016, with his 11th studio album, Freedom, Love & The Recuperation Of The Human Mind, set to be released before the end of next month.

The news comes in tandem with the announcement that the veteran muso will be hitting the road in early November for a handful of headline shows — two in Sydney, plus one each in Melbourne and Brisbane — as well as a performance at Adelaide's upcoming Whole Life Expo at the city's showgrounds but, with a little bit of time in-between now and then, Lee is keeping his fans sated in the lead-up with the unveiling of new single The Enemy Within, proudly premiering on The Music today.

The celebrated troubadour began recording the song at home in Laurel Canyon, California — where all the album's tracks first started taking shape — and conscripted the vocal talents of guest artist Sara Watkins to provide dulcet undertones to the track's gentle, warm embrace, which maintains Lee's penchant for accessible acoustic-centred ditties that carry a lyrical depth that deceptively outreaches its easy, ambling soundscape — in this case, canvassing "the greatest obstacle to our own growth and maturity — ourselves".

"The philosopher Gurdjieff said that the great work of coming to know ourselves really begins when we acknowledge that there is not one 'me', but many 'mes' that alternately take control of our personality," Lee said in a statement. "Of course, some of these have noble intentions, others not as much.

"This song addresses the realisation that we must steadfastly oppose those internal narratives and voices that speak to us of failure, defeatism, hopelessness, weakness and fear. The real heroic journey is the journey of the individual in opposing their own inner darkness."

Along with the work put in at Laurel Canyon, the wider Freedom, Love & The Recuperation Of The Human Mind album also took shape at the Nashville home studio of Grant-Lee Phillips (aka Gilmore Girls' town troubadour), with the new work effectively representing "the fruition of a musical vision that began for Ben as a teenager".

"I have always loved folk and acoustic-based roots music, but when I produced my records in that way as a teenager, there was no gravity or weight," he said. "I hadn't lived enough yet!"

He's lived plenty now, though, and it's all helped inform this record as a conceptual nod to "winning back the right to think for ourselves", Lee says. "I myself have explored several spiritual systems in my life and been a very loyal student but, at the point I wrote these songs, I found myself the first time as a truly free agent," he said.

"No systems, no gurus, no teachers, no subservience. I am passionate about freedom, and realise how delicate freedom can be. We are enslaved in so many ways, many of which are still to be revealed. These songs are a tribute to those who yearn for real freedom — the freedom of the human mind.

Give The Enemy Within a spin below; Freedom, Love & The Recuperation Of The Human Mind will be released on Friday 21 October. See Lee's website for more information.

See theGuide for a full list of dates, venues and other booking information.