CityLife

Brendan Benson

Brendan Benson
Academy 2
March 4, 2010

There was a time – let’s call it pre-Raconteurs – when Brendan Benson seemed like a fragile performer.

Then a shy but engaging solo artist formerly backed by a fairly temporary band of fine pickers, Benson stole all the attention on stage but never really looked comfortable in its gaze.

Post Raconteurs – his rock supergroup with old pal and White Stripes frontman Jack White – life as a solo artist looks and sounds very different.

The crowds are bigger and younger (this is his second tour inside six months and it’s still well attended) and Benson’s surrounded by a regular band of brutal players and pounders that seem to have utterly bashed the fear factor out of him.

Faithful renditions no longer cut it, instead he favours bringing everything home in loud, clattering style.

His soothing power-pop anthems to the loveless and luckless get feisty remodels: from the songs that made him, like Folk Singer and Good To Me, to the country swing of Sittin’ Pretty and the gushing heartbreak of Metarie.

Crucially, though, it’s his fourth album – My Old, Familiar Friend – that benefits from this flush of confidence. Poised And Ready bounces indefatigably, A Whole Lot Better shimmers in on a dream-sequence intro and Garbage Day shakes to a sparkling, Motown beat.

And if you can judge confidence on the cover versions an artist dares to tackle, then Benson has bucketloads.

An elegantly delivered version of Graham Nash’s Better Days is the ultimate showboat for Benson’s beautiful vocals while Tom Petty’s Listen To Her Heart reveals much about the music that inspired Benson to write in the first place.

He’ll turn 40 this year, but the enduring charm of Benson is that he still looks and sounds like a dreaming teenager.

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