Brendan Benson

Benson's voice has a gleam to it, a West Coast shimmer, the shine of a sleek new fender. When I hear Brendan Benson sing I think of the furl on a Coca Cola bottle, of broad Midwestern skies and bright yellow mustard.

It was there in the biography of course: a lifetime spread across four states, from a childhood spent on the outskirts of New Orleans, to his years in Detroit, Michigan, sojourns in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and a more recent relocation to Nashville, Tennessee.

Inevitably this has brought an itinerant quality to his songwriting, a geographical and emotional search for somewhere to belong. It is there in many of the titles: One Mississippi, Lapalco, Metarie, House in Virginia, Life in the D. But it is there, too, in the songs' tale of perpetual quest, both literal and emotional: is this the place? he seems to be asking. Is this the girl? Is this What I'm Looking For?

It is a style he has honed, of course. On 1996's One Mississippi, the songs came rough-hewn but charged with hooks and with wit; 2002's Lapalco brought a perfect pop ripeness, and by The Alternative to Love in 2005, there was something quite brilliant, quite burnished about his songwriting. Along the way he has co-written and recorded two spectacular albums with the Raconteurs, Broken Boy Soldiers and Consolers of the Lonely.