Last night, my boyfriend and his friend and I went to Ben Kweller's concert at Mercy Lounge. It was great. I knew it would be worth going, even though I wasn't feeling well at all yesterday, because I saw Ben perform a few years ago in Birmingham, and it was incredible. He is an amazing live performer. He sounds great and you can understand everything he's saying (I hate when you go to live shows and can't hear the lyrics over everything else). He's also really good at getting a crowd involved and singing along.
There are a couple of things that Ben does undeniably well, like write beautiful melodies and improv like a beast, but something I noticed particularly last night is how good he is at...um..."sound assimilation." (I just made up that term). What I mean is, Ben puts random "oohs" "ahhs" and "sha shas" in nearly all of his songs, but instead of it being cheesy or overdone, he plays it off perfectly. A lot of times when an artist starts randomly "ooohing" I just wanna pack up and go home. But Ben incorporates these random sounds into his songs so well, it's as if they are real lyrics with meaning. I don't know how he does it...but it's awesome.
In high school, I had a five-minute crush on a Ben Kweller look-alike. Coincidentally, I also recall him wearing a t-shirt with "Kweller" on it. It was appropriate.
