You better start limbering up because you don’t want to pull a hammy getting crunk to the funk of this man’s fresh new sound. The Cold, Cold Heart EP from Gideon Bensen has sprung. With crisp guitar hooks, crooning vocals and the ever boppy back up singer or two, Bensen has packaged the 60s to the noughties with a modern twist, getting you into grooves you thought were long dead. But by gum it doesn’t stop there. Bensen isn’t afraid to eke out a lil’ trumpet, a pinch of saxophone hither and thither, showing us that his sound is mature and he’s not afraid to experiment for our affections.
Gideon Bensen’s Cold, Cold Heart EP will make you feel, make you move, make you fill the expanse of the street. Bensen wants to have a lil’ talk, talk with you. So you’d better get moving.
Made of up four songs, the hungry amongst you may lament the limited supply. Let us reassure you. Beno needs not more than that. Within the space of 13 minutes we are given brooding funk, 80s synths, unapologetic bass lines plucking at your heart strings and what can only be described as dub-step and Prince’s love child. Suffice to say, this EP covers a lot of ground with Benson flexing his muscles in each track. And we be ‘mirin.
It’s important to say this music is not The Preatures. Benson has departed from their revivalist spin on ol’ school rock ‘n’ roll to come up with electronic-infused, saxophone-assured, growl-driven sound of his own; rich from teaming up with hotshot producer Tony Buchen and cameo of the real Megan Washington. Oh be still our quick beating hearts! The synths and crisp beats from afar are the mojo The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo’s Fire come to grace us in 2016. This shizz is different. And it is good for you.
It’s only fair your giving a debrief of what’s going to happen when you crack open the beauty that is the Cold, Cold Heart stubby. You’ll find your eye lids start to droop, the shoulder follows, the neck starts wiggling this way and that. The chest can’t help but tag along with the rest, the whole body is groovin’. What’s going on? This hasn’t happened since ’09 and you had that deep moment to Mr. Brightside. Yes, you can have that phenom again. You can feel again. Classic Bensen, opening up hearts all across Australia.
Okay, okay, we know we have to deal with the white elephant that’s gyrating in the middle of the room. Look, what you’re feeling is normal. We’re all a bit wigged out when artists of our favourite bands go off and do their solo thing. “I simply must do it,” we hear time and time again. We want to sit them down and say, hey dear beloved muso, you have a good thing going, the music you made before, ie, with The Preatures, is frothin’ amazing. So let’s not break a thing that ain’t broke you know? Is this how you feel they might ask. Yes man, I think you’re being cruel.
It’s great that Bensen is doing the concurrent thing. The Preatures stay. His new solo stuff blooms. We are all bloody winners. This way, it’s better than it could ever be. The Preatures are very much still a thing and now we of the ‘illustrious good taste in music’ community have another reservoir of tasty beats to sustain us in the hours of the stupid early morning.
To take some stellar lyrics from the artist himself, ‘you’re making me crazy’, yes Beno, you certainly are. And we bloody love you for it.
