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Benji Hughes

A Love Extreme  Hear it Now

RS: 4of 5 Stars

2008

Play View Benji Hughes's page on Rhapsody

He looks like an Allman brother, sings like Beck and suffers the dating travails of George Costanza. But on his sprawling double-CD debut, Benji Hughes is unmistakably — and always hilariously — his own man. The North Carolina-and-Tennessee-reared artist specializes in laugh-out-loud vignettes about hipster culture, with catchy, eccentrically arranged songs that straddle folk, lounge, electro, synth rock and a half-dozen other styles. There are tales of concertgoing and shrooming ("I Went With Some Friends to See the Flaming Lips") and starry-eyed odes to unattainable hotties ("Tight Tee Shirt"). Hughes sings in the drowsy voice of a slacker, but he has a poet's ear for telling details, and his mountain-man beard hides a wry smile. When Hughes' drolleries and hopeless romanticism combine, the effect can be sublime. In the stately "All You've Got to Do Is Fall in Love," he croons, "Wouldn't it be sweet if you could be in love with me/The way that I'm in love with you?/It's so easy to do/All you've got to do is fall in love with me." Hughes' logic — like his tunes and his wit — is unimpeachable.



JODY ROSEN

(Posted: Sep 18, 2008)

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