Ben Kunder returns to Halifax for his own headlining show at The Carleton, along with support from local songwriter Corey Isenor, on Wednesday, September 5th. The show gets underway at 8 PM and advanced tickets are $12, or you can fork over $15 at the door.

Ben Kunder is the kind of guy you pray sits next to you on a long-haul flight. Affable, erudite, and full of riveting tales about the ordinary and the extraordinary — and the intersection where they converge — Kunder is a storyteller of the highest order.

So, it’s no surprise that Better Human, the Toronto singer/songwriter’s dazzling new album and confident follow-up to 2015’s internationally acclaimed Golden, soars on vividly detailed vignettes elevated by Kunder’s warm conversational voice and, like Golden, by a small army of marquee musical guests.

Expertly traversing that rarefied space between elegiac folk and accessible pop, Kunder’s music — propelled variously by strings, pedal steel, keyboards, percussion, guitar, bass, and those spectacular before-mentioned voices — renders small moments in precise detail, making his songs both accessible and, occasionally, downright palpable.

“I realize it’s hard to know where to put me,” Kunder offers when asked where he’d expect to find Better Human filed. “I just write songs and hope people relate to them. I think there are people like me who listen to albums the whole way through, to hear the arc of the story. Others want to pick out specific songs to soundtrack their lives.”

From Enfield, Nova Scotia, Corey Isenor now lives in Halifax. He began songwriting and performing in earnest while going to university and living amongst marsh folk and swans in Sackville, NB. Since then, he has recorded and released 5 full-length albums, the most recent of which, A Painted Portrait (Of The Classic Ruse), was recorded at The Old Confidence Lodge in Riverport, NS.

Corey has toured multiple times throughout Atlantic Canada and played shows with the likes of Old Cabin, Dan Mangan, The Good Lovlies, Aidan Knight, Dale Murray & Christina Martin, Paper Beat Scissors, Al Tuck, Shotgun Jimmie, and more.