Brendan Benson: "Eyes on the Horizon"

The latter half of this decade has seen the revival, or at least the re-emergence, of a couple generations of power pop artists. Guys (for whatever reason, this is a male-dominated field) from the ’70s (Nick Lowe, Big Star), the ’80s (Richard X. Heyman, Mitch Easter, Tommy Keene, Marshall Crenshaw), and the ’90s (Jason Falkner, Roger Joseph Manning Jr., Matthew Sweet, the Shazam) have released generally well-reviewed comeback albums to a giant yawn from everyone who doesn’t frequent power pop blogs or dowdy discussion boards for boomer rock fans. (Benson solved the obscurity problem by hitching up with Jack White for their recent Raconteurs project; his new CD, My Old, Familiar Friend, hit the Billboard Top 200. The question of whether his music is actually more relevant than, say, Crenshaw’s Jaggedland [2009] or Sweet’s Sunshine Lies [2008] is a topic for another day.) Some of these men seem to have mellowed with age, opting for rootsy, stripped down updates of their classic material with slower tempos and huskier vocals. Others have gone all in, as if they’ve certifiably earned it, finding inspiration in ELO-style effulgence at the occasional expense of good taste.

My Old, Familiar Friend, Benson’s shiniest release yet, exemplifies the latter. The album’s title is taken from its best track, “Eyes on the Horizon,” a chilling first-person narrative that’s a mix of tirade, accusation, and hallucination. At first the lyrics seem like nonsense—“I sit and watch as the world takes shape / In streaks of color and fields of rape / Until the lions are burned at the stake”—but the fantastic images gain gravity as it becomes obvious that the raconteur (sorry) is psychotic, not just loopy. Chirping “nowheres” echo the lead vocal during the chorus while a barely audible low moan accompanies raving diatribes about blinding suns and thunder and lightning; the expansive backing track sticks to a minor key before shifting into a sing-song I-IV-I progression for the sections with the creepiest lyrics. By the final verse, a chorus of vocals reinforces the narrator’s charge that his interlocutor, his real or imagined “old and familiar friend,” wears a tracking device and that a man is following them everywhere. You can hear the voices in his head and they are singing along.