Aural Fixations

BRENDAN BENSON
The Alternative to Love
(V2)
Here at High Bias Multi-Mega Incorporated, we get promos. That's part of the understood deal with the record company folks: they send us all the unlabeled, cardboard-sleeved, cracked jewel-cased CDs we can stand, and we write glowingly about the good ones. Once in a while we wake up in a pool of our own bodily fluids and discover we've written glowingly about some of the others. Remind us to work on that.

Brendan Benson, though, is different: I buy his stuff. And please don't take that to sound sanctimonious from a guy who gets so many freebies. Without backing myself into a defensive position, let's just say that the amount of money I pour into the music industry is proportionate to the ringing in my ears.

I bought the oft-overlooked, brilliantly warped One Mississippi and the splendid Lapalco, and now I've purchased The Alternative to Love, even when I knew a promo was in the mail. This is the music you keep.

No producer is listed. A few backup vocalists get credit, and drummer Matt Aljian appears to have played all or most of the percussion. But the rest is Benson, chorus to cables. Chuck a dart at the song titles and you'll hit a highlight. "Spit It Out," all harmonies, tight hooks, and great, thick analog synths, is a ragtop cruise to the beach, just a great chorus-breeze in the face smelling of sea foam and forgotten cares. "Cold Hands (Warm Heart)" bobs and weaves hypnotically with ringing guitars and melody cubed. This is when The Alternative to Love starts to feel really promising, ya'll.

"The Pledge" will have you scrambling for comparisons to the grand pop sounds of yesteryear, like Phil Spector or Brian Wilson. Or it could be some long-lost John Lennon song, by far topping all the cassette-tape hoo-ha Yoko's unleashed on the public. "I never signed up for anything like this/I always wind up screwed without a kiss," Benson sings against bells and big drums. Close your eyes and just let yourself go as "Flesh and Bone" wraps you in multi-tracked melody, "Get It Together" jangles its way into your skull and "Between Us" steers the pop-coaster through your brain.

What Benson does best: write, play (on almost every instrument, in fact), and sing great electric pop songs. A dozen listens haven't prompted any startling revelations except that in the coming weeks there'll certainly be dozens more listens. Yes, this is the music you keep. Brian Briscoe [buy it]