Ben Kweller
Ben Kweller
Remember the days when male solo rockers ruled the pop charts? When you couldn’t turn on the radio without hearing “Free Fallin’” or “Born in the U.S.A.?”. Ben Kweller does. The 25-year-old indie wunderkind’s new album — entitled Ben Kweller — hearkens back to a time when Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen gave their roots rock a glossy makeover and became even bigger stars than they already were.
About a year ago, Kweller was re-painting his Brooklyn work space and found himself listening non-stop to two classic Petty albums from the late ’80s — Full Moon Fever and Into the Great White Open. It got him wondering where all the great male solo rock singers had gone? He couldn’t think of any who were still putting out mega-hit records. Inspired, Kweller set out to make his own. He layered acoustic and electric guitars, slide guitar, piano, glockenspiel, tambourine, snare drum, and even triangle (a first for a Ben Kweller album) atop shimmering vocal harmonies to create an indelibly melodic, sweetly nostalgic work that displays the depth of this ever-evolving singer-songwriter’s craft.
Busting out the triangle isn’t the only first on the Greenville, Texas, native’s third album. He also played all the instruments himself — everything from slide guitar to drums, which he learned when his musician father plopped him down in front of a kit when Kweller was 7. “It was intimidating to play everything myself, but I knew I could pull it off,” he says. “Maybe it was a crazy idea, but the payoff is always better on a crazy idea.”
He found a cheerleader in British producer Gil Norton (Pixies, Foo Fighters) whom Kweller turned to to help him realize his vision. “Gil gave me the confidence to show people I could do this,” he says. Norton also served as the prolific Kweller’s editor. “He’s excellent at finding the meat of the song or melody and bringing it to the forefront.” Together, the pair were going for a highly produced Wall of Sound feel. “I’ve always been into using raw takes and keeping things pure and not overworked,” Kweller says, “but there’s something about the opposite that can be really beautiful, too.”
Indeed, the production on Ben Kweller is in complete contrast to that of his previous album, the brilliantly raw On My Way, which was recorded live in a room with no headphones and few overdubs. Of the new album, Kweller says, “There’s a difference between ‘stripped-down’ and ‘simple’. You can have loads of instruments playing, but there can still be a directness to it, if it’s done right.”
Ben Kweller may be the artist’s most direct work yet. The writing is lean and focused, with songs about freedom and travel taking center stage. The opening track “Run,” a nostalgic look back at Kweller’s gypsy life, sets the tone, while the summery “I Gotta Move” carries it through to the reflective rocker “Penny on the Train Track,” where Kweller muses about running into an old friend who is now a police officer. “That really happened,” he says. “I bumped into a buddy from high school when I was in Greenville and he showed me his badge. That was a big moment for me to realize that we’re all growing up. To think that somebody I used to get in trouble with is now a cop!”
The album also contains plenty of Kweller’s trademark off-kilter love songs and ruminations about relationships, such as the melancholy “Sundress,” the starry-eyed “Magic,” the regretful “Until I Die,” and the conflicted “Nothing Happening,” which is about loss of friendship. Then there’s “Thirteen” — a spare, piano ballad that Kweller considers the album’s masterpiece.
“‘Thirteen’ is a breakthrough for me for many reasons,” he says. “As a songwriter with pop sensibilities, you can feel pressured to always write big, sing-along choruses, but I felt free to not adhere to any strict standard songwriting technique. I just kept writing verse after verse and picked my favorites. All these emotions were pouring out of me while I was writing it, and I think it’s significant because I wasn’t afraid of what I was saying — talking about sex, and stuff that I’ve never written about. The song means a lot to me.”
Kweller has come a long way since he first made his name at 15 as the frontman for pubescent grunge-pop band Radish in the mid ’90s. When the group disbanded in 1999, Kweller went solo, signing with Dave Matthews’ indie label ATO and releasing his debut album Sha Sha in 2002, which ranged from delicate folk-pop to full-on rock freakouts. He followed up in 2004 with On My Way, which critics hailed for its charming oddness and brightly contagious mix of lithe harmonies and shiny power-pop. Now, by nodding to the rock heroes of the ’80s, Kweller is taking the next step in his natural evolution.
(July 2006)