Ben Dunlap - Take My Chances (Review / Southeast Performer magazine)
Ben Dunlap - Take My Chances
Produced by Ben Dunlap, JL Floyd and John Horesco IV
Very often, the singer/songwriter field imposes a lot of limitations, either real or imagined, on its performers. Sometimes these limitations, be they instrumental, harmonic, etc., make the genre interesting in the sense that they require the songs to really shine through and tell the story in what is often a very raw and primal setting. Unfortunately, it's rare that the writer's ability is such that it is able to overcome said limitations.
Ben Dunlap is a singer/songwriter who is on his way to bursting through those limitations with Take My Chances.
Dunlap's regular-guy approach isn't original, but you get the impression that that's who he really is. It's only when he gets wordy or credits a stylist in the liner notes that you raise an eyebrow. The meat-and-potatoes poetry of "I Need a Girl," which celebrates beer drinking, baseball watching and regular girls, is a nice change from the usual glut of writers that attempt to flex their English-major muscles in the course of a song. Interestingly enough, Dunlap's attitude and subject matter are almost closer to Mellencamp, though his sound is more John Mayer meets Matchbox 20. You won't find anything out of the ordinary here, but Dunlap still delivers.
The one thing that the album could use is more varied arrangement. It's refreshing when Dunlap plays solo with minimal accompaniment on tracks such as "Don't Lie To Me," and though the rest of the record is consistent, eventually the percussive acoustic guitar, bass, drums, and static electric guitar arrangements become predictable. There are a few keyboard parts here and there, courtesy of keyboard wiz Damien Cartier, and it would have been nice to include more keys in the tunes instead of the guitar, or even have a solo piano song, if for no other reason than to keep the songs from running together sonically.
Ben Dunlap is off to a solid start with Take My Chances, and if you're looking for some artifice-free songs, this is a good place to start. (CBK Entertainment)
www.bendunlap.com
-Adam Deiboldt
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