Brendan Benson

LAPALCO took five years, (mostly) four tracks, three cities, two musicans and one career-changing major label stint. Brendan Benson's second album was written, performed and produced entirely by Benson, with an occasional assist from Jason Falkner. Its dozen songs showcase a brand of rock'n'roll melodicism that's both jangly and crunchy, wistful and witty, dreamy and dark, hi-gloss and lo-fi. As Burt Lancaster says to Tony Curtis in The Sweet Smell of Success, "it's a cookie full of arsenic."

Benson is an artist whose name evokes vague recognition among some, but drooling, obsessive enthusiasm from those who truly know his work. ONE MISSISSIPPI, his 1996 debut, is a semi-secret treasure, the sort of record that's bound to get a lavish reissue and 'lost classic' magazine articles in one or two decades time. Writer Jeff Gordinier has already listed ONE MISSISSIPPI among "the greatest overlooked pop masterpieces of the decade" in a recent Esquire feature.

LAPALCO is named for the main thoroughfare in Harvey, Louisiana, where Benson, the son of a welder, spent his childhood. It's also an acronym (hint: think Tennessee Valley Authority or Con Ed). But the record itself commemorates Benson's return to his birthplace of Detroit, where he also lived out those all-important teenage punk years. Until a couple of years ago, home had been Oakland, California.

"I thought maybe moving back would help my songwriting," Benson says. "I felt really isolated in Oakland. I had friends, but they were sort of spread out. My girlfriend worked, so I stayed home all day fretting. I went a little bit out of my mind."

Benson's woozy alienation from that time surfaces on the shimmering anthem "Folk Singer": "Every single day at eleven I'm home at bed in sleep heaven/alone 'cause my girl leaves at seven," he sings. "Ain't got time for my bed-in/she says 'stop pretendin'/you're not John Lennon.'" Though in reality, Benson's former love was more supportive. "Definitely," he says. "She probably *did* tell me I was like John Lennon."

Benson's ennui was basically a hangover from the alt-rock revolution. He got caught up in it in the early '90s, having moved to Los Angeles armed with a tape of 30 original tunes he'd recorded on a dual cassette deck, painstakingly overdubbing all the harmonies and extra guitar parts one track at a time via the 'mic mix' input.

A friend introduced him to Falkner, then of Jellyfish, and soon Benson graduated to the more sophisticated world of four-track. ONE MISSISSIPPI was partly a product of Benson's work with Falkner, and partly culled from a more lavish session with producer Ethan Johns, best known these days for his work with Ryan Adams.

ONE MISSISSIPPI's melodic Pandora's Box brought to mind everyone from the Raspberries and the Kinks to the Beatles and T. Rex to David Bowie and Matthew Sweet. Tastemaker radio station KCRW embraced it, as did countless critics, college deejays and peers as disparate as Four Non Blondes and the Loud Family. The only entity not blown away by it, ultimately, was Virgin Records.

"When they told me to stop touring, I knew ONE MISSIPPI was done," Benson recalls. "I wanted to start on a new record and put it all behind me, but I was devastated. It was my dream - my first record. I was promised the world. So many things didn't happen."

The experience left him with a wicked case of writer's block. "I got so into my own head," Benson says. "Thinking, is this cool? Are people going to think this is dumb? I never thought about that before. I had a little mental audience that I wrote songs to, and they were very forgiving. It got replaced by managers and record executives telling me I'm not writing choruses."

He headed home, and was able to quell the doubts in bits and pieces over the course of a year or so. "One day I realized, hey wait, I have enough songs here for a record." Enter Star Time head Isaac Green, whose enthusiasm for the project stirred up Benson's own. "I feel more comfortable being on a smaller label," he says. "Now I can just do whatever I want and hope I sell enough records to break even."

Benson's house in Detroit's Belle Isle neighborhood features a full recording studio, the one silver lining left over from his major label trip. He is hopeful that producing might pay whatever part of the mortgage his own music won't cover. It hasn't worked out that way so far, but he has happily worked for free on records by local comrades The Mood Elevator, The Haskels and a guy he calls "the best songwriter I've ever heard, in so long" -- an opinion lots of folks hold about Jack White of The White Stripes, who has done solo acoustic sessions with Benson, these days.

LAPALCO ranges from the wry but downbeat "Metarie," which glimpses back at the past to suggest an alternate universe of sunshine, fun and fame ("I know a guy/lives in Los Angeles/Sometimes his life there makes me so jealous") to the kickass fuzz box bubblegum of "You're Quiet." Songs like "Good To Me" and "I'm Easy" are surefire toe-tappers, but on the whole, LAPALCO is more meditative than its predecessor, especially with its conclusive troika of "Pleasure Seeker," Just Like Me" and "Jet Lag," all bittersweet, semi-acoustic semi-ballads. You wouldn't call it power-pop, though Benson never liked that term anyway.

"I usually say I'm pop-rock," he offers. "I like to get 'rock' in there."

And there's one more label he'll reluctantly embrace. "It's only recently that I've felt, like, wow, maybe I'm a cult artist," he says. "With the record coming out, I didn't know if anyone would care or even remember me, but people are excited. I know cult artist is just a euphemism for a guy who doesn't sell very many records, but that's fine."