{"id":41772,"date":"2009-11-09T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-09T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/my-old-familiar-friend\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T07:31:31","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T07:31:31","slug":"my-old-familiar-friend","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/my-old-familiar-friend\/","title":{"rendered":"My Old, Familiar Friend"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, most people in America who have heard of Brendan Benson know him as \u201cthe other guy\u201d in the Raconteurs<\/a> with Jack White.\u00a0 Those of us who knew him pre-Rac (pre-Jack?), however, knew him as a studio craftsman of the first order with a flair for retrophile alt-rock \/ power-pop.\u00a0 His 2005 disc The Alternative To Love<\/i><\/a> was in fact one of the more consistently entertainingly confections of that year.<\/p>\n

His several-years-later follow-up shows a Raconteurs influence in the sense that it\u2019s looser and thrashier in places, and overall a little bit less polished than The Alternative To Love<\/i>.\u00a0 But it\u2019s still quintessentially Benson — the punchlines arch, the melodies supple, the production searching for the sweet spot between lo-fi and fussy, with consistently retro tones featured in richly textured arrangements.<\/p>\n

Most of Benson\u2019s songs seem to take the form of rather biting dialogues between him and his lovers, in which they launch snarky sneak attacks of one sort or another against each other.\u00a0 Benson seems to have had some bad experiences in that department — or maybe it\u2019s just more fun being snarky.<\/p>\n

The opener is a perfect example, with its emphatic chorus of \u201cI\u2019ll feel a whole lot better \/ When you\u2019re not around.\u201d\u00a0 Not to mention this tart little bridge: \u201cI fell in love with you \/ And out of love with you \/ And back in love with you \/ All in the same day.\u201d\u00a0 Moody, is our Mr. Benson.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re reminded immediately by the next track (\u201cEyes On the Horizon\u201d) that one thing Benson does masterfully is arrange vocals.\u00a0 Here he layers his own background vocals against his lead vocals, fattening up the sound and even creating a lilting call and response with himself.\u00a0 It might seem a bit self-indulgent to construct a solo duet, but the end result is both technically clever and quite effective.<\/p>\n

My Old, Familiar Friend<\/i> finds Benson teaming with producer Gil Norton (Counting Crows, Pixies, Foo Fighters, Jimmy Eat World), who you would think might put a sonic stamp of his own on this album.\u00a0 The thing is, Benson\u2019s musical personality is so strong that in the end, sonically this album feels like The Alternative To Love<\/i> II<\/i>.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

This is true even where he does experiment; Alternative<\/i> found him giving one track a flamboyant Motown arrangement, which he does again here with \u201cGarbage Days,\u201d putting big strings over a loping backbeat and ascending sing-songy couplets.\u00a0 It sounds like a song that could have been written for the Supremes in 1964, until you get to the aggressively pathetic chorus, a sort of prequel to the Police\u2019s \u201cCan\u2019t Stand Losing You\u201d: \u201cAnd if she throws her heart away \/ I\u2019ll be there on garbage day \/ To sift through what\u2019s left I guess \/ To sort through the loneliness \/ And I don\u2019t mind if the neighbors can see me \/ I\u2019ll take whatever I can get, it\u2019s not easy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rest of the ride is entertaining enough, even if it doesn\u2019t add up to a big impact.\u00a0 \u201cGonowhere\u201d features analog synths fresh from a 1973 funk album decorating a twisted-inside-out Billy Joel piano ballad.\u00a0 \u201cPoised And Ready\u201d is the Cars on a British Invasion kick.\u00a0 \u201cDon\u2019t Wanna Talk\u201d finds something kicking loose in the rhythm section, a garage-y tone that would likely make Jack smile.\u00a0 And \u201cMisery\u201d \u2013 naturally enough in Benson\u2019s upside-down world \u2013 has a pleasantly jaunty melody.<\/p>\n

The thing is, even on those rare occasions when Benson loosens up and gets a little playful, these tunes have an unfortunate self-consciousness about them.\u00a0 There\u2019s no denying the consistency and artistry of this effort \u2013 every one of these tracks is a study in studio craftsmanship \u2013 but after a certain number of sardonic choruses over cleverly-constructed arrangements, you realize that what he\u2019s actually built with his major-label budget and endless attempts to be clever is an emotional wall between himself and his audience.\u00a0 For all its fussiness and smartest-kid-in-class efforts to impress, My Old, Familiar Friend<\/i> is ultimately a rather distant album, full of smarts but deficient in heart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":30133,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[7226],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-41772","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-brendan-benson","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41772"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52081,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41772\/revisions\/52081"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41772"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41772"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}