[rating=3.50]
Thirty year-old singer/songwriter Ben Kweller, whose cherubic face and ubiquitous wide-eyed grin make him look a decade younger, is in the midst of his second career in the music industry. As a teenager, Kweller fronted the Texas-based, alternative rock band Radish. Hailed as the next Nirvana, Radish became entangled in a major label bidding war before ultimately signing to Mercury Records and releasing the commercially disappointing Restraining Bolt. Prior to the release of Radish’s second album, tentatively titled Discount Fireworks, the band broke up in the late ‘90s, prompting Kweller to relocate to Brooklyn, NY, and begin anew as a solo artist.
By age 20, Kweller had inked a deal with the Dave Matthews-founded ATO Records and released Sha Sha, his charming debut full-length album that was equal parts Weezer and Ben Folds Five with nods to the Beatles and the folk and country music he heard during his Texas childhood. His subsequent releases – 2004’s On My Way, 2006’s Ben Kweller and 2009’s Changing Horses – followed a similar formula, incorporating elements from his chief musical influences while running the gamut from heavy riff-laden rockers to emotional acoustic guitar and piano ballads. On Go Fly a Kite, his fifth full-length album and first released solely on his very own record label, the Noise Company, Kweller demonstrates everything he’s learned in his 15-plus-year career as a singer/songwriter, exhibiting his penchant for infectious melodies, rich harmonies and expertly honed musical arrangements.
Go Fly a Kite commences with “Mean to Me,” a deafeningly loud rock song featuring distorted guitar chords, a memorable chorus and an incendiary guitar solo that can best be described as dirty. The rest of the album, outside of the raw “Time Will Save the Day,” is considerably less sonically abrasive. “Gossip,” for instance, is an alluring piano waltz incorporating pleasant electric organ parts, while “I Miss You” is a pretty piano ballad featuring poignant slide guitar; both tracks make use of lush vocal harmonies.
On the rollicking “Out the Door,” Kweller does his best Bob Dylan impersonation, delivering his vocals with a mostly monosyllabic cadence in the first verse before singing about the transient lifestyle in the song’s catchy choruses. Like the aforementioned track, the harmony-filled “Full Circle” and the jubilant “You Can Count on Me” contain an exorbitant amount of enthusiasm, sounding as if they were recorded at a hootenanny with Kweller’s closest friends in tow; the songs would have fit perfectly on his largely country Changing Horses.
The strongest track on Go Fly a Kite is “Jealous Girl.” With its glimmering lead piano melodies, sing-along choruses and spirited vocal performance, the song is a bona fide hit single waiting to happen. Substitute a synthesizer for the piano, and the track is the best ‘80s pop song written in the new millennium; “Stacy’s Mom” be damned.
In “You Can Count on Me,” the final track on Go Fly a Kite, Kweller sings, “It’s a sad day ‘cause all my old friends have changed/I just want you to know that I’m still the same.” This may be true personally, but the 20-year-old pop/rock wunderkind who released the delightful Sha Sha nearly a decade ago is long gone. A certain indelible quality that Kweller once possessed, be it a youthful exuberance or songwriting naïveté, has become increasingly absent from the musician’s work in recent years. Regardless, Ben Kweller remains one of music’s most reliable artists. Five albums into his solo career, he has yet to deliver a clunker. Go Fly a Kite may never reach the heights of Sha Sha, his best album, but the new record has certainly earned its rightful place amongst the rest of Kweller’s impressive catalog.
