Brendan Benson Bounces Back

To understand Brendan Benson’s current situation is to understand his past, and to understand his past is to understand upheaval. After spending childhood pinballing between his birthplace of Detroit and Louisiana, Benson eventually settled in Oakland, California, where in the mid-1990s he was discovered by Virgin Records and signed to a multi-album deal. Benson’s 1996 debut, Mississippi One, fell into the familiar rut of being critically acclaimed but commercially shunned, due in part to troubles with the record company. His first record has gone out of print, but since its release, Benson has switched labels and released a new album, Lapalco. With this new beginning, his career, one that began with so much promise, now has the potential to make further advances.

Benson brought his sound and songs from Lapalco to TT the Bear’s in Davis Square on Jan. 18 as a part of a mini-northeastern tour. TT’s eclectic interior and core audience reflects everything that is “bitsa” (bitsa this, bitsa that) in Benson’s appearance and performance. Part bar, part stage, TT’s has a reputation with hip Cantabridgians for bringing bands a level up from obscure. Physically, Benson is a little slight, a little wiry, a little scruffy and a little handsome. Evoking the image of grunge music’s founder makes for an all too easy comparison, but if you can picture Kurt Cobain without the weight of the world residing in his eyes and cheekbones, an image close to Benson will emerge. Sonically, Benson at times sounds like he digested the length and breadth of the Beatles canon in his infancy, but also presents jangly, everyman power pop. Full riffs and blurred chords populate every track, yet no two songs sound alike. While it is impossible to blanket Benson’s music with a singular categorization, his performance at TT’s and his recording never seem disjointed or lacking coherence, due to his uncanny knack for writing catchy hooks.

As the under-under-card for the Damn Personals, Benson strapped on a white guitar, took on TT’s minimalist stage and cramped confines and wordlessly launched into his 45-minute set with “Folk Singer” off Lapalco, from which he drew most of his performance. As a performer, Benson remained largely static and stone-faced (he left epileptic gyrations to his tambourine and maracas man), even failing to identify the members of his backup band. His workman-like approach brought focus more to the music than to performance, but also somewhat alienated an audience obviously familiar with most of his work. It was also off-putting, because Benson’s songs are mainly playful and self-effacing. On “You’re Quiet,” he croons “I need a pickup / And I don’t mean a truck”—delivered with a sardonic scowl, the song was robbed of any glee that appeared on the album. For an artist rebuilding himself, it hardly seems good business to reject special requests from his fans, but fortuitously, Benson’s music manages to overcome his personal aloofness.

On Lapalco, Benson sounds very much as he does in performance. The music runs far and wide from meditative to exuberant, driving to wispy, and at his heart, Benson exemplifies a kind of perpetual garage-band spirit but he manages to leave behind the negative baggage associated with that label. Neither Benson nor his rhythm guitarists ever take solos and stray away from founding chords in performance or on the album, but this is one damn good garage band. Benson Benson is a much better than average vocalist, his licks are compelling, and his experimentation within the garage idiom so refreshing that restraint hardly matters. Lapalco’s appropriately titled opener “Tiny Spark” greets with random electronica samples from the mid-1980s, but then rolls over into an upbeat, self-confessing rocker that is quintessential road music. Instead of upping the ante, Benson then moves down a gear into “Metarie,” a frankly earnest ballad about the first, halting steps of a burgeoning relationship. Folky guitars, ascending chromatic tones and backing-singer Emma J’s plaintive voice lend the track a haunting, ethereal quality, but for want of a female vocalist, “Metarie” unfortunately didn’t make it into the TT’s performance.

In other tracks, Benson’s composition—he wrote seven tracks and shares authorship on the remaining five—shows that he’s done his musical homework. Parts of “What” pay homage to Iggy Pop’s “I am a Passenger,” and Benson astutely captures the California post-punk movement and adds to that Beach Boys influences on “I’m Easy.” The fusion is seamless and the result is supremely infectious music. Over the course of a week, I could not help but warm to the album—it has now become a staple in my CD changer—even if I remain cold to Benson’s performance personality. Benson hardly ever seems to come to Boston and the suburbs, but Lapalco and its resilient, enduring songs will worm their way into your mind even when not spinning the disc.

Brendan Benson may be “just” a garage band musician, but he’s taking his own form of music to the ultimate level. Every band started in a garage, basement or a living room; thankfully, some just never left.

Lapalco

Brendan Benson

Startime