Ben Kweller - Debut album - SHA SHA + Interview

SHA SHA
Debut album released 22nd July 2002

“Sex reminds her of eating spaghetti”

... indeed it does, according to Ben Kweller, the 21 year old music industry veteran who lifted this line from Gregg Araki's 1995 movie Doom Generation to include in the sherbet stomp "Wasted and Ready," the first single off of his debut LP Sha Sha.

Master of all trades, Kweller combines influences ranging from Brian Wilson to Dinosaur Jr. in a rootsy mix of harmony-drenched melancholia and sunny fuzz box pop. With its hurling of jaunty Pavement pianos at skewed pop sensibilities, Ben Kweller's debut is as invigorating as it is eclectic.

After leaving Radish, his late-nineties band (“just your average high school band who got to release a major label record”, says Kweller), and his hometown of Greenville, TX in 1999, Kweller launched a solo acoustic career, settling in Brooklyn and peddling his trade along the east coast. Having recorded one home-studio CD, Freak Out, It's Ben Kweller, which he distributed at his acoustic shows, a call from long time friend and mentor Evan Dando unlocked new doors as the Lemonheads legend asked BK to open for him on tour.

Similar invites from Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, Creeper Lagoon, and Eels soon followed before the men from 679 Recordings (home of The Streets) made known their interest in Kweller's promising career. His first full-length album for the label is preceded by EP Phone Home and is comprised of 11 tracks:

1) (How It Should Be) Sha Sha
2) Wasted & Ready
3) Family Tree
4) Commerce, TX
5) In Other Words
6) Walk on Me
7) Make It Up
8) No Reason
9) Lizzy
10) Harriet's Got a Song
11) Falling