Brendan Benson has been marginalized in the music world this year. The Raconteurs have been written about by every major music publication and most all of them imply that Benson is in a totally unequal partnership with Jack White in a band that is, according to White, supposed to echo The Three Musketeers� motto of all for one and one for all. As if, right? Try as he may, White simply caused journalists to scoff at even thinking to call The Raconteurs a “super-group.” Doesn’t “supergroup” imply that more than one of the members is “super”? seemed to be the general consensus. Not to mention the fact that a band where the famous lead singer whom everybody knows is called �Big Jack� and the unknown bassist with glasses who�s never dated an Oscar winning actress is called �Little Jack� doesn�t exactly meet the �all for one� philosophy. Benson, the public laughs, probably is a great musician…in White’s alternate world where divorced couples are brother and sister, the world is candy cane colors and chin beards are all the rage! But for once, Jack White is actually right: Brendan Benson is something of a pop music genius.

Now if you listen to Benson expecting The Raconteurs, you won’t find it. This is straight up Beatles-esque, layered, power-chord heavy, completely unpopular power-pop. But Broken Boy Soldiers isn’t really that far from Benson’s solo work�in fact, it’s probably closer to Lapalco than it is to Elephant. I’d go so far as to say The Raconteurs are pretty much just Benson’s pop songs filtered through Jack White’s personal brand of dirty, amped up garage rock. Benson’s solo work isn’t as garage-y sounding or even living room-y sounding (like Paul McCartney’s early solo albums). It’s much more akin to the other one man band power-pop master turned producer turned New Cars front man Todd Rundgren. Take a listen to “Jetlag,” the final song on Lapalco. The first three and a half minutes have an under produced, repetitive quality, featuring a repeating piano riff with a Casio fooling around somewhere in the background. It sounds like almost a throwaway track�a demo maybe, yet to be completed. But at the 3:33 mark, a mechanically altered and slowed down voice tells us to “come on now” and an array of acoustic guitars and backing vocals that would make Jeff Lynne blush jump in to finish out the song, taking it to another level. Like Rundgren, Benson knows his way around his home studio and he has fun with it. He’s not afraid to be the only one overdubbing vocals for a choir of voices on his own song, nor does he shy away at showing off his collection of vintage keyboards and analog synthesizers on pretty much every song.

It’s fitting that his first two solo albums were a heavy collaboration with Jason Falkner�a man who has had his hand in almost as many power-pop pots as his one time bandmate in The Grays Jon Brion (and both have shown similar lack of success when going solo). But before you go crying that Benson can’t write a decent song without a co-writer, watch out, cause Falkner had nothing to do with 2005’s Alternative to Love, and it may be his best effort yet. No it’s not as consistent as Lapalco, but with assistance from Tchad Blake, Benson’s songs come into the 21st century. Although the album was also made in his home studio, he had a new partner in Tchad Blake. And it’s clear with a song like “The Pledge” with its clanging bells and echoing percussion, that a slick-as-snails 2005 production style fits him just as well as the 70’s aesthetic he’d employed on his earlier albums.

Another criticism thrown at Benson is that he doesn’t “rock”. This is a fair assumption if you’ve never heard the man’s music. But listening to “You’re Quiet” (from the Metarie EP, not the Lapalco version) with its Townsend-baiting guitar moves, thrashing drums and synths out of a 50s William Castle movie, it easily rocks harder than anything on Get Behind Me Satan. It’s true that rocking out isn’t really Benson’s thing, but he sure as hell can when he wants to. He may not show the same guitar heroics as his new band mate, but they don’t all have to be Clapton, can’t some just be George Harrison?

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