Brendan Benson’s career path has been a roller coaster of lows such as label disputes keeping records in limbo, and mild highs including the track “Tiny Spark” from his 2002 album Lopalco’s being used in a Saturn ad. Recently, though, his profile got a bit brighter when he teamed up with Jack White to form the super’ish group, The Raconteurs. So, despite putting out three truly great but minimally heard albums, starting with 1996’s totally ignored One Mississippi, an album deemed by my friends at the time as the greatest $2.99 cut-out money could buy, now seemed the time for Benson to finally break through. Unfortunately, My Old, Familiar Friend is not quite the album fans might have hoped for. It, like Benson’s career, is filled with some highs but is fleshed out with a few too many lows.

Benson’s career has been pretty much a microcosm of the power pop genre of which he’s best known. Combining Beatles-esque melodies over power chord progressions seems like a can’t lose proposition, but the genre is littered with few success stories. Most of the time, power pop bands find a small, albeit faithful, following or just fade away into obscurity. (See Sloan’s masterpiece of self-reflection%2Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
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Never Hear The End Of It, for more insight.)

Let’s start with the good because, after all this time, Benson deserves it. Album opener, “A Whole Lot Better,” bristles with energy and is followed with the extremely Todd Rundgren-like “Eyes on The Horizon” that, despite it’s liberal borrowing, has a melody that will stick in your craw. But melody is not the problem with the album. Too much time and budget might be.

With a label firmly behind him it feels like Benson indulged himself. In a way, it hurts some of the material. On Lapalco, a song like “Garbage Day” might be a charming little acoustic song a la “Life in the D.” But here a string section gives the tune a cheesy, Lenny Kravitz faux disco vibe. Lyrically, including an unceasing need to rhyme excessively, it feels like a great Brendan Benson song buried beneath a layer of schmaltz. Following “Garbage Day” up with the the mid-tempo “Gonowhere” kind of brings things to a halt. Fortunately the slow burn of “Feel Like Taking You Home,” with it’s “Watching the Detectives” crawl, brings things back into focus.

There are certainly places where an extra touch of studio time doesn’t hurt as much. The swirling strings of “You Make A Fool Out Of Me” fulfill the McCartney balladry Benson is clearly fond of. I’m not one to judge harshly of someone tapping their inner McCartney. As he pointed out on Lapalco, he’s not John Lennon. But he is at his best when adding the power to power pop and there are some real hits such as “Poised and Ready” and album closer “Borrow,” which is one of his most catchy and just plain rocking songs. But unfortunately there a few missteps including the self-fulfilling prophecy of “Don’t Want To Talk” with it’s blah blah blah lyrics. And maybe a bit of over thinking to make “My Old, Familiar Friend” the commercial or, more importantly, artistic success it should have been.

But let’s end on a positive note because power pop purveyors have endured enough neglect. These past few years have seen a resurgence in truly great power pop including Sloan’s Never Hear The End Of It, Telekinesis’s self-titled debut and the grandfathers of the scene Cheap Trick’s completely surprising The Latest to name a few.

My Old, Familiar Friend might not showcase Benson at the top of his game but expectations may have been a little high because, despite its flaws, you’ll still find yourself walking around singing these songs in your head long after you’ve turned off the, let’s say, stereo. That’s a testament to the man’s ability to combine an infectious melody with a ferocious chord progression. You could do worse.