Benji Hughes - A Love Extreme [Album]

"He loves beer but he loves women even more"

November 14, 2008, 11:14 AM

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On receiving the Benji Hughes album, I was quite surprised to learn it was a 2 CD album. This is a very ambitious and audacious thing for an artist to do with their debut album. A debut album should effectively be short and sweet. It needs to grab the listener with 10-12 tracks, half of which consisting of stand out hit songs and fundamentally, leave us wanting more. Bringing out a double album with some 25 songs on, it’s unlikely you will achieve this.

Benji Hughes is from Charlotte, North Carolina, USA, who ‘loves beer but loves women even more’. As well as being a singer/songwriter, he also plays guitar and keyboards, and did most of the playing on the album.

The first track on Disc One, is an instrumental track that instantly makes you think of summertime. It’s got a brass section accompanied by acoustic guitars, over a chilled beat. You think it’s setting the precedent for the rest of the album, which is why I got a bit of a shock when Benji’s low gravely vocals start the second track with ‘Tight T-shirt on a real sweet girl’. When I first heard his almost durgy vocals, I didn’t think I was going to enjoy it. But I was completely wrong – his vocal style is much like Mark Oliver Everett from The Eels, and it works perfectly with what I can best describe as 60/70’s infused electro. The song ‘Waiting for an Invitation’, you can especially hear Beatles influence, but with his unique funky electro flare added to it. One of the things that Benji does do and completely works in his favour is his repetition of lyrics, most prominent in his chorus’. To put it bluntly, a lot of his chorus’ are just one line of lyric repeated over. But it’s not monotonous, it’s catchy. Annoyingly catchy in fact, as you then find yourself singing it all day long! But as I mentioned, it completely works to his advantage as the result is the songs are instantly catchy and memorable. As well as this however, he confronts you with lyrics that are witty, clever, and somewhat insightful. And they’re all delivered by his cool, fluid vocals that are so laid back you’d think he was half asleep when he sung them.

The song that really stood out is ‘You Stood Me Up’, with its smooth grooves and explosive chorus (the words of which are ‘you stood me up’ repeated) - I defy anyone to not be dancing and singing along to it by the end of the first listen. And whilst I do really really enjoy Disc One, there really isn’t much more to say on Disc Two. It’s just more of the same, but not quite as good. The only song that really stands out for me is ‘So Well’, but I can’t honestly say that any of the others did. I don’t really understand why he released ‘A Love Extreme’ as a double album – the first CD is punchy, catchy, interesting and instantly grabbed my attention. Double with which, it has songs that you’ll have in your head all day. I personally think he should have packed all that extreme love into one album.

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