Pure Shiny Pop
I wouldn't say he is 'today's premier male solo rocker', but he did brandish this particular type of indie rock first. Why, I remember just bumbling along at Reading and happening upon his set in the Carling Tent and I noticed I bared witness to someone doing something that hadn't been done on any of the other stages over the weekend.
This record is altogether different to his previous releases however, in the fact that it's produced to absolute perfection, dispelling the raw and live feel of his other albums. He said himself of the production technique, "I've always been into using raw takes and keeping things pure and not overworked, but there's something about the opposite that can be really beautiful, too."
He also said that he believes the track 'Thirteen' to be the album's masterpiece and that's hard to disagree with. It doesn't have the famous Kweller chorus, but rather verse after verse of poignant lyrics about simple relationships things such as those long deep conversations, first kisses, 'making out' etc. and it is a splendid song that lands half-way through the record and provides an emotional interlude that takes the whole thing to new depths.
There's a lot of get-up in your get-along tracks on the record too, 'I Gotta Move' would get you moving in the morning for sure if it came on your radio to wake you up, and the wonderful song about growing up, and finding out your old friends are policemen, 'Penny On The Train Track', is a boptastic shaker with handclaps and all the bells and whistles to make erstwhile pop.
'I Don't Know Why' seems to hark back to the stages in great singer songwriters' careers when they went through a pop renaissance and became bigger than ever, take for example Springsteen and Tom Petty, the song itself comes across as Lou Reed meets R.E.M meets Ben Folds, and it's quite a delightful mixture.
There's a lot of Ben Fold's influence in Kweller's new style, a very shiny polished sound and a lot of plastic smiles, but it isn't wholly without a sense of sincerity whatsoever. Indeed the song 'Magic' is absolutely beautifully written, but will be very at home in the shallowest of music collection, which I suppose is a winning ticket really...
He still seems so young, and he is really, but Ben Kweller is pretty much the forefather of a scene that is now exploding in America with the likes of Jason Mraz and pals coming from all angles. His influence over solo male indie is quite wide-ranging and can even be argued to stem as far as the likes of jack Johnson. So if you're unfamiliar with all that then Ben Kweller the artist and Ben Kweller the album will be a good place to start!