It was power pop prowess all over the place when Brendan Benson breezed through Hoboken Saturday night. You hear that term "power pop" when you read up on Brendan, who at 39 has a handle on the genre. It's kind of a lost art form, which has morphed over the year to either water-downed mainstream generic popular music or bratty whiny music made by no-nothings. So Brendan showed on Saturday how it's done. I've never seen him before and was curious to he does it.
Like any good musician, B.B. makes it look easy. He's not a flashy guy when he stand on stage -- he just lets the music do its thing. It's an effortless performance that left me impressed. I wasn't pumping my fist and banging my head like the super fans in front of me, but a sure sign I enjoyed it was that it went by quickly. In fact, I've seen to come upon a semi-trend of encoreless sets (Neko Case, Times New Viking and now B.B.).
His fourth album, My Old, Familiar Friend, could be Brendan at his best. It's a tight and peppy album with solid track. "Don't Wanna Talk" has a classic 70s pop feel, while "Poised and Ready" has tremendous drive. While in the past few years, Benson might be best known for his hit-making work with Jack White in The Raconteurs, I first think of his perfect song, "Cold Hands, Warm Hearts". It's one of the breeziest, happy feeling pop songs of this decade.
It was a straight-forward show, no outlandish shenanigans for a sold out evening. Although, I was transfixed by his t-shirt -- trying to figure out what the heck Barking Irons On the Bowery meant. It's just a NYC-based high end t-shirt company -- you know, $50 t-shirts that guys who work with Jack White can afford. Barking Irons was a term for pistols back in the ye olde New York.
By comparison, Cory Chisel is a chatterbox on stage for his opening set. The guy has a great sense of humor, especially when it comes to poking fun of Benson and Benson's bassist Jared, who both had to fill in for Cory's missing band mate. He asked B.B., "You remember how to play this song, you wrote it." Benson responded, "Nope." To which Cory replied, "Awesome."
As I've mentioned before, whatever it takes to be a successful singer-songwriter, Cory has it. He and Branden wrote the song "Born Again" -- just a perfect song that displays Cory's love on American folk. This was C.C.'s first visit to Jersey, so he made it a special occasion by trotting out of cover "One Man Guy" by Loudon Wainwright.
As a side note, as mentioned he utilized Jared Reynolds from Benson's band as a last minute replacement. I knew somebody had to mention it -- I overheard somebody in the audience say ,"He went to Jared." If you don't know the reference, consider yourself lucky. It's a commercial for the jeweler Jared, and it's by far the most annoying commercial in the history of the medium.
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