Brendan Benson - Dear Life [LP]

Third Man Records is proud to announce the first new LP in almost seven years from Brendan Benson. DEAR LIFE arrives via Third Man Records on Friday, April 24.

Benson’s seventh solo album and first full-length release via Third Man, DEAR LIFE is heralded by the rhapsodic first single, “Good To Be Alive.” “’Good To Be Alive’ is kind of weird, to be honest,” Benson says, “But that’s what I’m most excited about. It says a lot about this record, it’s almost got a split personality or something. It’s totally bizarre – I still sit back and listen to it, thinking, that’s so cool! It’s like somebody else played it, it’s not the same old me.”

Benson finds himself in an enviable spot as he enters the third decade of a remarkably creative, consistently idiosyncratic career – an accomplished frontman, musician, songwriter, producer, band member, husband, and dad. DEAR LIFE marks this consummate polymath’s most inventive and upbeat work thus far, an 11-track song cycle about life, love, family, fatherhood, and the pure joy of making music. Produced and almost entirely performed by Benson at his own Readymade Studio in Nashville, the album sees the Michigan-born, Nashville-based artist – and co-founder, with Jack White, of The Raconteurs – reveling in a more modernist approach than ever before, fueled by a heady brew of cannabis, hip-hop, and a newly discovered interest in software drum programming. The result is an untapped playfulness that elevates expertly crafted songs like the future funk-fueled opener, “I Can If You Want Me To,” and the ecstatic “Richest Man Alive” with voluble arrangements, elastic grooves, and incandescent power. Imbued with revitalized ambition and confidence, DEAR LIFE is Brendan Benson at his very best.

“There's something about this record,” Benson says. “A friend of mine called it ‘life-affirming.’ I thought it was a joke at first but then realized, well, it’s about life and death for sure. I don’t know if that’s positive or optimistic or whatever, but that's what's going on with me.”