Singer-guitarist Ben Kweller, now 27, is a music biz veteran, having
released albums both with his old band Radish and as a solo artist since he was 13. He’s
been a punk rocker, indie rocker, power-popster, and balladeer, and for his fourth solo
LP, Changing Horses, he dives headfirst into much rootsier fare. We hit
an upbeat Kweller up for a session of Review the Reviews, wherein we read excerpts from
recent reviews and get the reaction of the reviewed.
“Changing Horses, his self-produced fourth LP, isn’t
quite the country & western crossover most would have you believe, more like
the dirt road connecting his previous paths. (Austin Chronicle)
“Right! I mean, the album’s way more Jackson Browne than Merle Haggard.
Country music and roots music has always been one of the side roads that I take once in
a while, and for this album I wanted to make it the main road.”
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“He’s nodded to his Texas roots before, but on this collection meant to play up
his twangy side, he seems scared of edging too far into the darkness of country
music’s long, rich tradition.” (Paste)
“Hmm. Whatever. They don’t know me. I mean, I opened the album with a whore
and ended it with a junkie. I don’t need to explain too much. I don’t need to prove
anything to anybody.”
“ … the best is ‘On Her Own,’ a number in praise of female self-determination
with a precise, pedal-steel-driven chorus that would fit nicely on a Faith Hill or
Brad Paisley album.” (Rolling Stone)
“That’s really cool that they would even reference that shit because it’s so
far from … I’m obviously not a Nashville pop-country guy. But the whole thing about
this album is that all of a sudden there are people in the country side of the business
that are finding out about me for the very first time. So for Rolling
Stone to even say something like that, I’m psyched. I’m over the whole
indie-hip—I just feel like I paid my dues for so fuckin’ long in the indie-rock world
that if my stuff took off in country, that’d be really exciting and refreshing.”
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