Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 11/09/06
Label: Columbia

He may look like he still has to get his older brother to buy his cigarettes for him, but there's a whole lotta man inside Texan troubadour Ben Kweller. Long admired, in a somewhat avuncular fashion, by the likes of Evan Dando, Jeff Tweedy and Dave Matthews (who first signed Kweller to his indie label ATO) for his anti-folkish indie pop - see 2002's charming, rickety, stuck-together-with-sellotape "Sha Sha" - Kweller's well-deserved graduation to big school seems assured by this confident and polished fourth album.

Drawing inspiration from 1970s, blue-collar, one-o'-the-guys US singer-songwriters such as Springsteen, Petty, Seger and Mellencamp, "Ben Kweller" ripples with melodic muscle and big sounds. It's not only in the allusive title that opening cut "Run" calls to mind "Born To Run" - it's also in the choppy, uplifting xylophone and piano riffs and lyrics about teen dreams and leaving town. You can virtually hear the Pontiac's engine being revved in the street outside. Even if it doesn't proceed to wow the Edith Bowmans of this world, this has to be one of the finest album tracks of the year. Meanwhile, "Sundress" tempers a melancholy geek-ballad verse with an air-punching chorus.

The perky, euphorically restless "Penny On The Train Track" ("If you can't get behind your home life / Get behind the driving wheel / And go, just go / Find a place that you don't know") deals with the minor paranoia of finding out an old school pal has become a cop. To imagine what "I Don't Know Why" sounds like, try singing the title to the melody of Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down". His mentors would be proud to claim any of Kweller's tracks as their own. And yet, whereas Bruce and Tom etc flavoured their steering-wheel thumping anthemia with period bitterness and hunger, Ben performs with a highly noughties air of youthful optimism, and sense of classlessness - he's not doing this to ease the stress of a 12-hour shift at the anglegrinder.

Furthermore, there are lashings of unashamed romanticism. Midway though the LP, on a wave of Denim aftershave and pheromones, there's a change of pace with the soft, spare "Thirteen", in which Kweller, in his characteristically honest, uncorrupted tones backed only by his own piano playing (he plays all instruments here from guitars to glockenspiel), and a brief Neil Young-esque blast of harmonica, offers a personalised love letter to his wife: "We questioned religion / Gave bread to the pigeons / It was in the back of a taxi / That you told me you loved me / And I wasn't alone."

All praise to producer Gil Norton - Pixies, Foo Fighters - for steering an album so engaging it is impossible to pick one best track. And gratitude to Kweller for not joining his old mate in the police department.

    by Anna Britten