Ben Kweller
Changing Horses

Review By Jesse Jarnow

When Ben Kweller burst onto the music scene in the ’90s, he was a teenage phenom in his first band Radish, a hard rocking trio with a bittersweet pop undercurrent. When Kweller departed Radish for his solo career as a still very young adult, he largely softened the harder edge to concentrate on his pervasive pop skills, which earned him a rabid following and tons of great press. Only occasionally has Kweller’s east Texas upbringing surfaced in his work with sporadic forays into folk or rootsy rock, as he’s leaned toward an interesting hard pop blend of Harry Nilsson and Weezer.

Perhaps it’s Kweller’s advancing years — he’s nearly 30 now — or maybe it’s his recent relocation to Austin and a return his Texas roots, but something has clearly grabbed him by the Nirvana T-shirt and gotten the attention of his country id. Changing Horses is an amazingly straightforward Americana album for a guy with a longstanding love of pop, although the former is definitely informed by the latter in Kweller’s capable hands. The most striking feature of the album is Kweller’s ability to reference the classic ’70s period of country rock, that time when early proponents like Gram Parsons, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Asleep at the Wheel and Mike Nesmith were having on impact on their higher profiled peer group — the Rolling Stones and Elton John, for instance — while folding in the sweet pop elements that have always been his trademark.