Ben Kweller blends together countless instruments — including glockenspiels, tambourines, xylophones, organs, harmonicas and triangles, to go with the usual guitars, drums and pianos — in an effort to create accessible but atypical, charming and irreverent pop-rock.
Kweller was raised in Texas by a family that encouraged his musical inclinations; he learned to play drums at 7, wrote a song on the piano at 9 and signed a notoriously ill-fated record deal as leader of the mid-'90s grunge band Radish while still in his mid-teens. Remarkably, he's gone from teen washout to solo success as a young adult, releasing a string of fun, increasingly well-received albums under his own name. His latest is the new, appropriately titled Ben Kweller.
Copyright 2006 XPN