Brendan Benson ‘Alternative to Love’ (V2 Records)

So Brendan Benson and Jack White are going to release one of the best albums that anyone has heard since ‘Nevermind’. That sounds very cool indeed. I can’t wait. Apparently The White Stripes are also going to release another album too. So that’s like the main course and pudding to this album, the starter. I’m not sure if that’s how they are planning to market it but, hell, it hasn’t been done that way before.

Anyway, for those of you who don’t know Brendan Benson, he, like Jack White, is from Detroit and he also sings about going to school and liking the girl next door. ‘Alternative to Love’ is his third album following the (only recently) re-released ‘One Mississippi’ and the better received ‘Lapulco’, and is a collection of indie rock songs representing the angst of being a young(ish) middle class American male. Benson has a distinctive singer-songwriter style that easily translates, in the studio, into good, four piece rock’n’roll and a voice that seemingly has a not insignificant appeal to the fairer sex - girls next door tending to go for their male counterparts after all.

The album kicks off with ‘Spit It Out’ which is a suitably energetic track but not about oral sex as one might imagine. ‘I Feel Like Myself Again’ is closer to his last stuff than a lot of the other tracks on the record, with a satisfying sing-along chorus and signature synthesisers. Like a lot of singers since the 60’s, Benson has an passing air of John Lennon about him and further on down the play list, ‘Pledge of Allegiance’ is unmistakably influenced by the be-spectacled one’s later material – easy rock and roll featuring tubular bells.

Albums being difficult things to put together, there are a couple of fillers, most notably ‘Gold into Straw’ which kind of stinks. Similarly ‘Flesh and Bone’ gets a bit tiring but in a striking and refreshingly clever move, Benson recognises this and deftly cuts it dead before to move straight on to ‘Get it Together’ which appears to continue the previous track by being the song it was trying to be.

Throughout this album, and similarly with his other records, it is Benson’s double track vocals that give each song a distinctive sound. The quality singer-song writing talent mixed with strong production techniques has meant that ‘Alternative to Love’ really is a progression from his other two albums – not so much a move away from his previous work, but more like refining the sound. People who have heard his stuff in passing have been quick to dismiss it as middle of the road and the music certainly doesn’t have any pretensions to it, but much like other music labelled in this way it does have a tendency to grow on you fairly quickly.

But in light of earlier revelations this really is all academic. Seriously - a collaboration with Jack ‘Can Do No Wrong’ White? Why bother buying ‘Alternative to Love’ if you can experience Benson on something with an almost solid gold guarantee? Why bother buying anything at all until that point for that matter?

words: Robin Harris

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