Brendan Benson - The Alternative To Love

Genre rock Publisher V2 Records External Links Official Website V2 Records

Brendan Benson is a tortured artist. After anti-depressants cleared him of the funk of having his girlfriend of eight years leave him, he started writing again; his last album being the (critically) successful Lapalco.

After listening to The Alternative To Love, I am reminded of many of my childhood musical influences, as well as my modern musical influences. I hear strains of Simon and Garfunkel and The Flaming Lips in various sections of this album. After hearing the press on this release, there are two artists that come up, one in print and one in my mind.

The print is the reference to The Beatles. With Benson's easily digestible pop sensibilities and lyrics seemingly cute, although heavy with loss, I feel that it is a noble comparison. However, I feel the more apt comparison is to the late Elliott Smith. Mr. Benson's dark overtones ring more synchronous with Smith's to me. But that brings the whole other topic of Elliott Smith as our generation's John Lennon. That said, let's move to the album's content.

The album's opener, "Spit It Out," is an upbeat number, talking about the built-up feeling of when you're getting dropped by a loved one, with the countdown beginning. I think that it is a solid opener for an album and for a show. The next is "Cold Hands (Warm Heart)," whose opening seconds reminds me of something off of Moby's Play album. The chorus, proclaiming that it "shouldn't be this hard" against the pop rhythm, is really too much for my taste. The title track (number four) is the Simon and Garfunkel-esque track on the album, complete with "clap" track. It also has the first mention of lambs on the album. "The Pledge" invites comparisons to the aforementioned Flaming Lips. The Lips often use distorted drums in the front of the mix, battling with keyboards and guitar (cf. The Soft Bulletin), as does Brendan here. As the album progresses, lambs are brought up at least once more, and the music switches from fully produced band pieces to acoustic loneliness. Lyrically the album is definitely singer-songwriter, although it is more on the melancholy adult-contemporary side.