Jay Bennett
Daytrotter Sessions
(hear it)

Wow, Jay Bennett's voice is trashed. It's amazing. Bennett is the tragic figure of "I am Trying to Treak your Heart". In that documentary about Wilco, singer and visionary Jeff Tweedy allowed the thumb to tilt toward the sand, and here Jay sounds like he has been torn apart by the lions.

The songs are rather Beatley, and somewhat Steve Earley. I think his lyrics remind me of the Fountains of Wayne or They Might Be Giants, for some reason. Bennett is straightforwardly clear. His lyrics don't make me wonder, but they obviously come from a man trying to be honest with himself, which is really as much as you can ask.

It's strange to me that Jay Bennett takes such a "rock" approach to the music. In my viewing of the movie, he drew a lot of the sonic blueprints for Wilco's great and weird Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and the different architecture of their later albums supports that impression. I am very interested in music which succeeds in the style "of the people" while being full of oddities and points of interest. I guess I was expecting that Bennett out of Wilco would be the negative space image of Wilco without Bennett. Oh well. Good rock music though.

bb, 3 may 08