Ben Kweller - 'Wasted & Ready' (679)
4/5
By: Austin Louis Ray
You may have noticed - but today's pop-scene is a tired, repetitive one, filled with innocuous groups put together by money-grubbing, mainstream masterminds. It can have its moments though, and Ben Kweller is one of those - a rose in the proverbial dung heap of popular music.
The 21-year-old's second single, 'Wasted & Ready', is a mood-lightening tune, party anthem and sing-along gem all rolled into one; it's pretty hard not to like. Simple, clean guitar starts out the tune, setting up an innocent beginning scene, the vocals beginning unassumingly enough, too - until the explosion into the chorus...
... What's that? Well, yeah, it does smack of Weezer. But if anything, the fairly blatant similarity is the song's only setback. From there, things continue in typical fashion, with a heart-on-sleeve line to boot: 'It's easy, but it seems so hard/You're near, but you seem so far.' Clichéd? Yeah, maybe. Effective? Most certainly.
Maybe Rivers and Co. have mastered this sound prior in various forms. But the fact remains that not all of Kweller's material takes on such a direction, and - as a single - 'Wasted & Ready' gets the job done, pop perfect.
Artists in this article: Ben Kweller
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