Daily Listen by Brian Brock

Jay Bennett - Whatever Happened I Apologize

(hear track 1, “Another Town Another Ride Another Window”)

Jay Bennett is utterly heartbroken.

Have you seen the Wilco movie, “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart”?  It’s basically a movie about Bennett up against the reality of politics and relationships.  The director put in a bunch of other stuff about how hard it was to get Yankee Hotel Foxtrot released, and a bunch of live and rehearsal performances (and how is it possible that those rehearsal shots all sound so great?), but the Bennett/Tweedy conflict is the story.

At the beginning, Bennett is a happy clam, turning instruments and playing knobs for all he’s worth.  When it comes to mixing, you see him trying to pick his way through his bandmate’s intentions like a beaten animal.  Finally, he’s alone, out of the band, on stage, and singing some kind of serious gloom - in a song which as far as I remember is actually a pretty nice lullaby or something.

Great vocal sounds.  I kind of expect Bennett to drop some crazy YHF-to-the-extreme sounds all over his music, but what I’ve heard is usually pretty straight ahead folk/rock.

The album’s available free, as noted on his myspace page, although the website he posts only showed up in a Google cache, for me.  Anyway here’s the file: http://rockproper.com/files/29/download.zip