The Daily OrangeBen Lee's vocals, acoustic guitars guide nauseatingly plain 'nice guy' album
By Alex Coon
Posted: 2/22/05, 12:20 AM EST Section: Face the Music
BEN LEE
"AWAKE IS THE NEW SLEEP"
Genre: Sensitive Singer/Songwriter
Next of Kin: Guster, O.A.R
1 star
There's a reason nice guys always finish last. Nice guys are always too caught up holding doors, pulling out chairs, laughing at jokes that aren't funny and generally just kissing ass for popularity's sake; they couldn't possibly finish out in front. All the frontrunners are just a bunch of cutthroat jerks anyway, too busy figuring out how to stay ahead to please a crowd. The nice guys aren't ever really vanguards, but at least they're generally pretty likable. Ben Lee must be a pretty nice guy: his brand of pop has all the necessary "nice guy" ingredients. Hushed, breathy vocals? Check. Acoustic guitars? Check. Warm arrangements? Sing-along choruses? Good times? Check, check and check. Yeah, Ben Lee must be pretty all right.
Well, fuck Ben Lee. Fuck Ben Lee, and fuck the 12,792 other "nice guy" musicians who are shitting out this uninteresting, god-awful hyper-positive wannabe-hippie "O.C."- soundtracking "indie-pop" bullshit on a daily basis and getting paid/laid for it. And fuck you for liking this. In fact, fuck all the nice guys, they deserve to finish last. They're goddamned boring, and boring people have no goddamn business making music. Miles Davis spat in the faces of overzealous fans, George Harrison screwed his best friend's wife and Prince made poor, naked Appolonia jump into a lake (and it wasn't even Lake Minnetonka!). And not one of them would ever think about creating music this abysmally bland.
Maybe I'm being too hard on Ben Lee. He's not claiming to reinvent the wheel, and his music is agreeable enough. It's all relatively catchy fare, blatantly designed for singing along and feeling good about life. I even liked leadoff track "Whatever It Is" a little bit for the first 12 seconds, until those 12 seconds were repeated ad nausea for the remaining 3 minutes and 6 seconds (Lee literally plays the same four arpeggios for the entire song). I could have forgiven this misstep had Lee not then proceeded to play the same repetitive nice guy schlock for the next 13 songs and 40-odd minutes. Lee makes an attempt at variety with "Light," whose 9 minute 48 second runtime is nauseatingly long, as the song is basically a standard Lee composition with about five minutes of narcoleptic saxophone soloing glued on the end. Needless to say, this does little to break the monotony.
Listening to this album is like staring at wallpaper for 12 hours, but I'm sure that won't stop nice guys everywhere from rushing out to buy it. Assholes.
"AWAKE IS THE NEW SLEEP"
Genre: Sensitive Singer/Songwriter
Next of Kin: Guster, O.A.R
1 star
There's a reason nice guys always finish last. Nice guys are always too caught up holding doors, pulling out chairs, laughing at jokes that aren't funny and generally just kissing ass for popularity's sake; they couldn't possibly finish out in front. All the frontrunners are just a bunch of cutthroat jerks anyway, too busy figuring out how to stay ahead to please a crowd. The nice guys aren't ever really vanguards, but at least they're generally pretty likable. Ben Lee must be a pretty nice guy: his brand of pop has all the necessary "nice guy" ingredients. Hushed, breathy vocals? Check. Acoustic guitars? Check. Warm arrangements? Sing-along choruses? Good times? Check, check and check. Yeah, Ben Lee must be pretty all right.
Well, fuck Ben Lee. Fuck Ben Lee, and fuck the 12,792 other "nice guy" musicians who are shitting out this uninteresting, god-awful hyper-positive wannabe-hippie "O.C."- soundtracking "indie-pop" bullshit on a daily basis and getting paid/laid for it. And fuck you for liking this. In fact, fuck all the nice guys, they deserve to finish last. They're goddamned boring, and boring people have no goddamn business making music. Miles Davis spat in the faces of overzealous fans, George Harrison screwed his best friend's wife and Prince made poor, naked Appolonia jump into a lake (and it wasn't even Lake Minnetonka!). And not one of them would ever think about creating music this abysmally bland.
Maybe I'm being too hard on Ben Lee. He's not claiming to reinvent the wheel, and his music is agreeable enough. It's all relatively catchy fare, blatantly designed for singing along and feeling good about life. I even liked leadoff track "Whatever It Is" a little bit for the first 12 seconds, until those 12 seconds were repeated ad nausea for the remaining 3 minutes and 6 seconds (Lee literally plays the same four arpeggios for the entire song). I could have forgiven this misstep had Lee not then proceeded to play the same repetitive nice guy schlock for the next 13 songs and 40-odd minutes. Lee makes an attempt at variety with "Light," whose 9 minute 48 second runtime is nauseatingly long, as the song is basically a standard Lee composition with about five minutes of narcoleptic saxophone soloing glued on the end. Needless to say, this does little to break the monotony.
Listening to this album is like staring at wallpaper for 12 hours, but I'm sure that won't stop nice guys everywhere from rushing out to buy it. Assholes.
