Brendan Benson - Low Key (2022)

Not every two-year period measures out the same, noted Brendan Benson, the 51-year old Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter and co-founder of The Raconteurs. Benson had just finished his well-received seventh album, "Dear Life" in 2019 when his world came to a stop. "I was rehearsing for South-By-Southwest and gearing up for a tour and had a band ready and then, of course, the world shut down," he said in a recent interview. The lockdown then began to reroute lives, societies and ambitions worldwide. "Everything changed," Benson said. "I went to work on some songs so I'd have new material when things opened up." Over months with minimal interactions, those songs coalesced and took on lives of their own, he said. Two years of semi-isolation, of fading relationships, of the natural inward turn that comes with less human contact unexpectedly pushed Benson's song-writing into new places. Instead of being an afterthought, Benson's solitude evolved into, "Low Key" the eighth album by the idiosyncratic songwriter who has enjoyed both world-wide popularity with the Raconteurs and a devoted cult following for his numerous solo projects. Low Key, the Nashville-based artist said, was his chance to explore how lives and relationships changed during the lengthy isolation from the normal interactions of everyday life. Benson might not have written songs such as "People Grow Apart" and "Whole Lotta Nothing" prior to 2019, he said. "The lockdown afforded people the opportunity to cut ties - or maybe it caused people to do that," he said. "Whatever the case may be, a lot of people fell out. But then relationships ending is one of my favourite topics for song writing," he said with a laugh. This isn't to say that the 8-track effort recorded in Benson's own Readymade Studio in Nashville is a grim look at the state of human condition. Just the opposite. The catchy, upbeat lead track "Ain't No Good," pokes fun at destructive self-absorption while the guitar-heavy "Whatever's On My Mind" skewers Benson's own hyperkinetic, stream-of-consciousness thinking. And then there's the most unlikely track of all: A cover of Gerry Rafferty's smooth 1978 hit, "Right Down the Line." The cover was suggested by a friend. "She's always been saying I should do that song. I don't normally pay attention when people say that stuff. But then I happened to hear it one day and I said, 'Dang. This is good.' "Greg Calbi, the album's mastering engineer at Sterling Sound says: "Brendan combines the classic 80's style song-writing in the Squeeze, Crowded House vein with some incredible contemporary sonic magic, the kind of album which entices the listener to get tickets to a live show immediately."The lockdown that left him mostly with himself, professionally speaking. Confined to his Nashville studio, Benson played every instrument on Low Key and handled all of the initial production.