The Alternative to Love

VINYL FORMAT. The Alternative to Love feels like the precisely calibrated offspring of its predecessors -- brighter than Lapalco (which was dubbed "an album of such radiant beauty and wrist-slashing introspection that is pulls all other pretenders to the Beatles/Beach Boys mantle firmly in their places"), not quite as big a sugar-rush as Mississippi. "It's a nice kind of blend of the two," Benson says. Despite his professed allergy to singer-songwriter syndrome, Benson has been doing more acoustic gigs the past few years, which played into the songwriting process. And while the songs are mostly about love, heartbreak, and connection, the context isn't always romance -- Benson also draws on harder life experience, like being abandoned by his father, and the death of his grandfather who raised him. "A lot of times it might sound like I'm singing about a girl, but it just might be about someone or something entirely different," he says.