More than anything, Jay Bennett understood the ins and outs of a song. His arrangements were, as the tunes demanded, lush and cluttered or spare and straightaway. His playing was limber, never showy. His own sturdy output was like a workshop in form. He had a songwriter's voice-- a little gravelly, careful to put the weight on just the right syllable. He is, even now, best known for getting kicked out of Wilco for being too conservative; that's the same Wilco that would go on to make Sky Blue Sky and Wilco (The Album), mind. But Bennett was a classicist, a formalist, possessed of a subdued confidence and a clear vision. Having resettled in downstate Illinois, crafting a series of deft, restrained works with a handful of impressive collaborators, he died unexpectedly a year ago May, leaving behind a mostly completed LP, Kicking at the Perfumed Air, comprised of stalwart, sad, often quite affecting pop-rock songs.
It begins with "Diamond Smiles", a patient, somewhat unlikely Boomtown Rats cover that, under Bennett's direction, proves far prettier than its original, the "love is for others, but me it destroys" line resounding especially under the circumstances. It's offset nicely by the ramshackle "Second Last Call" that follows, a "Dreamer in My Dreams" style tumbler that's far and away the album's most upbeat number. From there the record quickly downshifts into far starker balladry, its arrangements plaintive, uncluttered, sunlit-around-the-edges. For as many sneaky, inobtrusive production flourishes he throws on the ballads, there's just as many left bare; it's here that perhaps we see the unfinished side of Perfumed, but these prove largely more haunting than the record's ruddy rave-ups and gently adorned slow numbers. Bennett was a sharp enough songwriter to suggest other master craftspeople without seemingly copping a move, and there are shades of Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, and even Bruce Springsteen here. Although most of the record is Bennett of a recent vintage, "Mirror Ball" finds him joined by a few of his old bandmates in the Wilco loft way back in 1999. Despite that-- and the occasional sharp shift in tone-- Kicking coheres in a way few posthumously compiled LPs do.
It's tempting to want to read the tea leaves in a release like Kicking at the Perfumed Air. Although Bennett's death has been ruled accidental, it's no secret that he was battling some illnesses and legal woes at the time of his death, all of which seem to weigh on the songs here. It's most assuredly a sad record, as much of Bennett's output was, and the occasional incomplete-sounding arrangement does lend the proceedings a certain starkness that suits the somber mood. But by all accounts, at the time of his death, Bennett was looking to finish up Kicking and get on with whatever was next. This, then, is to be taken as yet another Jay Bennett solo album, not any kind of final statement.
Indeed, the downtrodden tone is more maudlin than funereal; Bennett knew the power of using merely a couple of words to convey an emotion, and there's far more instances of that sort of keenly observed everyday melancholia like, "I see her twice a year/ And it breaks my heart" (which'll knock the wind out of you as Bennett sings it) than the record's more alarmingly depressive stuff. Moments of levity-- like the stunningly sputtery guitar solo on the unbuttoned freewheeler "Hotel Song" or the Boomtown Rats cover-- coupled with Bennett's easygoing arrangements keep Perfumed from feeling like a dirge or some sort of prophesy. Indeed, a few of these tunes seem a bit workmanlike, and several of even the stronger numbers might've benefitted from a bit more attention to sonic detail. But Perfumed works simply because Bennett was such a keen craftsman, his mournfulness so elegantly expressed, and as such, nevertheless serves as a fitting elegy for an under-appreciated and occasionally misunderstood songsmith and musician taken too soon.
