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Three Mississippi
Brendan Benson’s Alternative to Love
BY MIKAEL WOOD
Related Links

Brendan Benson's official Web site

Jonathan Perry reviews Brendan Benson's Lapalco

Brendan Benson knows his butter. We’re sitting in a cozy French restaurant on Ninth Avenue in Manhattan, and the Detroit-based power-pop virtuoso is explaining why European butter is so much better than the American stuff: it’s richer and creamier and tastier, with subtler and more developed flavors. Benson says the French varieties are the best but that here at home you can do a lot worse than Plugrá, an American variety its maker says is "churned in Old World tradition." He can’t identify the brand of the substance he’s spreading on his bread at the moment, but he claims it’s much better than what one usually gets in this country.

It makes some sense that Benson, who headlines downstairs at the Middle East this Wednesday, should care so much about butter. Like the European brands he savors, his music improves on much of the competition: richer and creamier and tastier, with subtler and more developed flavors. First noticed for the 1996 album One Mississippi (Virgin), on which he collaborated with genre heavyweight and ex-Jellyfish member Jason Falkner, Benson writes do-it-yourself pop songs that burst with clever melodies, arrangements, and instrumental colors. A typical Benson song sounds both polished and off-the-cuff, its varied production a reflection of its emotional tenor and its lyrics. And he had to navigate a series of music-industry misadventures to get his music heard: after Virgin allowed One Mississippi to disappear from its catalogue, Benson disappeared from view until 2002, when the Brooklyn indie StarTime International issued the overdue follow-up, Lapalco. V2, the "major indie" founded by former Virgin honcho Richard Branson, agreed to license The Alternative to Love from StarTime and Benson. But then V2 offered to sign the artist outright. "The contract was renegotiated, I guess," Benson says. "Which takes forever."

Benson was ready to release Alternative ages ago; after he finished touring in support of Lapalco, he returned home to Detroit and wrote and recorded the album in "five or six months." Because of the extended gap between his first and second albums, he wanted to get his third out quickly, to avoid becoming, as he puts it, "the guy who always takes forever. I had to answer that so often that I thought, ‘All right, I’ll show them — I’ll fucking have this record out so fast.’ " He sighs. "But no such luck."

It’s just as well: Alternative sounds like the kind of album that takes time to gestate. Full of fuzzy guitars, sweet keyboard lines, tightly layered harmony vocals, and wry turns of phrase, the disc, like LA indie stars Rilo Kiley’s recent More Adventurous (Brute/Beaute), riffles through vibrant styles like an overexcited record collector. There’s the amped-up garage rock of "Spit It Out," the crisp jangle pop of "Cold Hands (Warm Heart)," the Cars-style new wave of "Feel like Myself," the acoustic folk pop of the title track, and even a lush Phil Spector production number titled "The Pledge" where Benson admits, "I always wind up screwed without a kiss." Throughout, he displays the sure hand of an experienced home recorder. With the money left over from his Virgin advance, he began collecting gear for the studio in which he recorded Lapalco and Alternative — "I never bought anything like clothes or cars." He laughs and admits that he has no idea what he’s doing. "It was mostly me just kind of fumbling around in the studio until I could get a sound on tape. I think a little adversity, something to work against, is a good thing. If it went smoothly, I’d worry that maybe it wouldn’t be a very good record. It’d be suspicious."

All the same, Benson is capable enough to suit his own needs in the studio, and over the past few months, he’s been working on a much-talked-about duo album with White Stripes frontman Jack White in Detroit. (In 2003, the Stripes recorded a cover of Lapalco’s "Good to Me" for the B-side of their "7 Nation Army" single.) "We always talked about doing it," Benson says of the collaboration, which is mostly done and will likely be released late this year or early in 2006 under a name he and White haven’t yet come up with. "It’s just what you’d think, I guess, the two styles kind of just shoved together." Scruffy but refined: it’s the Brendan Benson way.

Brendan Benson headlines this Wednesday, April 13, downstairs at the Middle East, 480 Massachusetts Avenue in Central Square; call (617) 864-EAST.


Issue Date: April 8 - 14, 2005
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