Ben Kweller
Sha Sha

THE REVIEW

In one of those talent shows for prodigious children who sing outstandingly and annoy everyone, Ben Kweller would not have made it big.

Yet, we're actually talking about a bona fide former child prodigy: first album as a singer/guitarist/composer released at thirteen, second at fifteen. That the Radish were a horrendous band is beyond doubt, but Benny in ninety-four was truly a youngling and I think he could be forgiven for the acute nirvanitis, also because a bit of talent did shine through, he was already evidently excellent at playing and singing - while the rest of us at that age learned the hard way that Topexan is for external use only - and above all, he wasn't like one of those slick, cravattine-wearing kids on TV singing O' sole mio with perfect vibrato, otherwise the slaps would fly: Ben Kweller was a genuinely young individual.

Finally, at twenty-one, a debut solo album for the Californian boy who brushes his teeth on the cover. Album of semi-maturity. Unthinkable today when King Krule is as rare as they come and the delay in age for anything puts us a bit down: but we're talking about twelve years ago, almost thirteen now, and things were still noticeably different.

Anyway, Sha Sha is one of those albums so permeated with adolescent moods that they always sound fresh, like Bandwagonesque and the first two Weezer albums; the coordinates, after all, are these: power pop, vocal harmonies almost omnipresent, college distortions, and electric ballads. Ben Kweller adds piano to the mix - which he plays, among other things - so the beginning and the crazy electric organ interlude of How It Should Be (Sha Sha) might suggest a wacky and skittish alternative songwriter type of Beck: a piece of virtuosity for three voices. But Wasted & Ready - in which a horn, or at least something similar and very Pet Sounds, and even the Christmas bells (someone tell me what they are really called) pop up - is power pop for college radio to the core, an outtake of Pinkerton, the song Rivers Cuomo in two thousand and two wouldn't have managed to write, because he had already screwed up his talent. Moreover, Kweller's timbre and his taste in vocal lines recall (a lot) the first Cuomo, i.e., the only possible Cuomo. For Harriet's Got A Song, we could claim a place in the Blue Album and I really can't think of better compliments. The same goes for Commerce, TX. Family Tree with its Bop Bop and its delightful harmonies tells us that the boy has picked up a couple of things from the usual Beatles and that can only be good for him. Falling, a perfect piano pop closer, tells us that perhaps the business world underestimated Ben Kweller a bit - a potential money-making Billboard-eating machine - and that can only be good for him.

Long live youth, however fleeting it may be. And screw Gerriscotty.