It strikes me that there are two sorts of Phoenix fans: those who want to pretend
like they're Bob and Charlotte and dance up a storm to "Too Young" (which,
whilst we're at it, is a fine pop-song, but nothing compared to "If I
Ever Feel Better," the true hit from that first 'nix disc); and those
who love the Parisian gents on an entirely different level, the kind
of sentimental dorks who ooh at every evocation of The Eagles and ahh
each time they cop a lick stolen from Steely Dan, especially that so-Steely-it-hurts/
hurts-so-good number where Thomas Mars (whose name I just had to look
up; how can a guy so outrageously gifted as vocalist/lyricist still be
known as but "that dude from Phoenix (you know, the band, not the place)"?)
sings "devotion's not the problem, it's me against a wardrobe" and it
makes earnest/emo-ish boys with glamorous girlfriends feel both defeated
and empowered at once. If that's the sort of Phoenix you love, then Benny
Sings is singing for you; the Dutch dude makes with more of that ultra-heartfelt,
extra-good '70s-AM-radio warmth, there being a song herein, on his second
compact disc, that sounds joyously similar to that choice Phoenix jam "If
It's Not With You." Here, on "Me and My Guitar," over a/his (Boogaertsy)
guitar, dollops of analog organ, and a harmonica seemingly stolen from "That's
What Friends Are For," the ubiquitous Benny croons a sunshining tune
whose ostensible lyrical silliness — cutesy couplets like "But every
time I tried to run/ Someone came and stole the sun" — belies a
charmed lyrical message. The songsmith sings of wishing to not be so
indebted to artistic artifice, and wishes he wasn't afraid of emotional/psychological
exploration in his songs. Sings is singing something profound, contrasting
with the song that delivers it; such singing speaks of the greater whole;
such a song is that microcosm of this album's macrocosm.
On his second longplayer, Benny has taken an evolutionary artistic step, yet
many people will read it as some sort of kitsch joke. As a beatmaker with a smoove-jazz
jones/jonze, stepping to the microphone as a sort of self-conscious crooner,
Benny seemed, on his debut Champagne People, to be but a Dutch counter
to cats like Finland's Jimi Tenor and Sweden's Jay Jay Johanson, making a one-man
fashion show to all sorts of careful programming. Here, though, those electro/jazz
elements have fallen by the wayside, Benny bunking down with a band of hot players
(jazz musicians, curiously enough) and singing his way through a live-recorded
set copping all its groovy moves from folk like Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Boz
Scaggs, Hall & Oates, and, yes, Steely Dan. It all culminates in a cut called "Make
a Rainbow," where he evokes Disneyist/Muppetlike fantasias with a kitted-out
chorus and chiming piano-chords; it's more of the spirit of Jim James' psychedelic
recollections of childhood wonderlands in My Morning Jacket's hairy country-rock
than it is the conceptual Cult pantomime peddled by the entertainingly meaningless
novelty act the Polyphonic Spree. Benny tosses some sand in the Vaseline of the
Vaseline-lens'd wonderland by having the chorus sing "Make a rainbow/ 12 different
colors/ 12 new leaves will sprout/ to piss off the clouds," its final finale
met by the most enthusiastic reception from the audience, whcih appears only
intermittently on this disc's (professional) final edit. It's all the more beautiful
for the
way you hear Benny say, most gently, underneath it all — all but lost amidst
the hooting and hollering, drowning in rapture — "I love you." Yeah, me
too.
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