Rollicking
Musical is
a minor masterpiece of rock production recorded by Milwaukee music veterans Mike Benign and Joe
Vent. The debut album by this new lineup of old friends is a carefully layered
effort that never loses the organic sound of a rock band, a tip of the hat on
many tracks to the influence of George Martin and kindred spirits from the late
‘60s. “So Easily Sold,” for example, sounds a little like a deep cut from Bad
Finger.
The songs themselves are entirely the work of
Benign, a writer of elliptical vignettes grounded in the ‘80s style of Squeeze
and Crowded House with many wry wrinkles in the lyrics. And yet the production
and arrangements continually allude to an earlier period, complete with
Beatlesque harmonies and the icy whisper of Tyler Traband’s melotron. Perhaps
the album’s most brilliant track, “The Soothing Sounds of Seals and Crofts,” is
an insomniac’s nightmare at the edge of fuzzy psychedelia, an insistent beat
drumming home the anxiety of sleeplessness.
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