Brendan Benson: Lapalco : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Detroit songwriter Brendan Benson took six years between his major label debut and Lapalco, his return to the music marketplace. Fortunately, Benson is the sort of pop-rock, singer-songwriter who makes timeless music that takes multiple listens to unfold. Also fortunate, Lapalco is strong enough on its own terms to win over new listeners who never had the chance to catch him the first time around. Benson is a writer's rocker with a sly, self-deprecating wit that's neither obscure, nor overly navel-gazing. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Lapalco is a collection of catchy, alternately rollicking and quietly bittersweet odes to introspection that are as universal as the late night, semi-drunken answering machine message or the love note you never quite had the guts to send. He doesn't so much vacillate between ambivalence and declaration as he plays one against the other. It's the tension between carefully-crafted and tossed-off, looking inward and rocking out, that gives Lapalco its homemade-arena-rock appeal and invites the listener back for another look.

CHRIS HANDYSIDE
(February 25, 2002)