The Alternative to Love
BRENDAN BENSON
V2
Melody is becoming an increasingly rare commodity in popular music. That's why we need fellows like Brendan Benson, whose square-one in writing a song is coming up with a grabby hook – or several. The Alternative to Love is the first great power-pop album of '05, and at this rate, it could very well be the last.
The Michigan-based Benson is a true auteur who sings and plays all the parts on his recordings, save for the occasional (non-famous) guest artist. The important thing is that you'd never know; his tunes pack the same punch as those by full bands, regardless of how he layers and assembles his music. (Some of the credit here goes to Tchad Black, who mixed the CD.)
When it comes to arrangements, Benson doesn't just slap together a guitar-bass-drums foundation: While acoustic and electric guitars provide the backbone, he buoys the songs with judicious synths and other keyboards, and occasionally decorates them with sleigh bells (a la Phil Spector) and tambourines (a la Motown). This gives Benson's work a pleasingly broader sonic range than most power-pop efforts.
Similarly, the songs themselves cut a wide swath. The opener "Spit it Out" proves that the perfect guitar-pop tune is still attainable. Built around a churning verse, the song breaks into a chorus that flat-out soars. Radiant. The CD continues with four knockouts: the midtempo "Cold Hands (Warm Heart)"; the bouncy, Motown-influenced "Feel Like Myself"; the singer-songwriter-esque title song; and "The Pledge," an unabashed homage to Spector that you could easily hear tumbling off the lips of the Righteous Brothers.
Throughout, Benson showcases a knack for layering his own vocals, be it in simple tart backing harmonies or meticulously arranged wordless blankets of sound. The artist excels more in these "ensemble" moments than in his lead singing, which is tuneful and chameleonic but lacks a vivid identity.
The Alternative to Love flags a bit in the middle, with three tunes that, while agreeable enough, don't make the same impact as the opening sequence. Benson then revs the disc back up with taut rocker "Get it Together," and finishes in fine style with the slinky "What's I'm Looking For" (which, to these ears, sounds like vintage Squeeze) and the comparatively garage-y "Between Us." 
-ERIC SNIDER
The Great Destroyer
LOW
Sub Pop
Despite its cemented reputation as perennial purveyor of the low-key, low-volume and looooong, Duluth, Minn.-based trio Low has occasionally flirted with something approaching rock music over the course of its 12 years and six full-lengths. Little in the band's back catalog, however, will have prepared fans for The Great Destroyer. Easily Low's best album to date, The Great Destroyer draws from an incredibly expansive palette of sounds and styles to create its own Americana – baroque yet contemporary, intimate yet bombastic, and rootsy yet completely new. From the turgid "Everybody's Song" and comparatively uptempo pop of "Just Stand Back" to the echo-chamber melancholy of "On The Edge Of" and whisper-to-wall-of-riff "When I Go Deaf," this album consistently redefines both Low's particular sonic identity, and the notion of pop-song arrangement itself; by applying its own adventurous, evocative dynamic and choice of textures to shorter, more traditional song structures, the band turns what might've been an attempt at a collection of uncharacteristically "straightforward" tracks into a cohesive and personal re-imagining of what "straightforward" tracks can be. 1/2
-SCOTT HARRELL
Friends and Lovers: Songs of Bread
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Badman Recording Co.
A gaggle of hip artists ranging from the fairly well-known (Cake, The Posies' Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer) to the largely obscure (Oranger, a host of others) pays homage to suddenly cool '70s folk-pop outfit Bread. Given the fact that a large chunk of this compilation came from singer-songwriters, most of the covers keep close to the original vision/version, making for a pleasant, but somewhat innocuous, listen. Highlights include Call and Response's nicely cheesy samba take on "Baby I'm A Want You," Cake's characteristically electro-rocking "The Guitar Man," Ken Stringfellow's power-popped-up "Down on my Knees," Oranger's lush, jaunty "Make It with You," and Rachel Goswell's stunning "If." Everything here is, uh, nice, but a few more liberties taken – like the Holy Sons' somehow snide "Last Time" and Emily Sparks' synth-y, evocative "Too Much Love" – would've made for a more intriguing set. 1/2
-SCOTT HARRELL
The Way Up
PAT METHENY GROUP
Nonesuch
The least interesting music coming from the Metheny oeuvre over the last decade or so has been via his Group recordings. The Way Up – despite being the ensemble's first long-form composition (in four movements) – covers a lot of well-trodden melodic territory, and some of it is simply trite (Lyle Mays' album-opening piano figure sounds like something Dave Grusin would've been written for a Dudley Moore romantic comedy). The motifs are lush and pretty, but after a quarter-century of PMG material, it's all becoming rather disposable. To his credit, guitarist Metheny has expanded his sonic palette beyond the trademark muted, hollow-body jazz sound to include some more bite, but, in the end, that's just not enough.
-ERIC SNIDER
This article appears in Mar 23-29, 2005.