Ben Lee Album: “Ripe”

I'll be the contrarian here. I bought this from a used bin at my local indie on the strength of some of his older work (songs I connected with from the far superior "Awake Is The New Sleep"). I even sampled a few tracks in the store, and found them appealing and catchy. The problem was, on further listens, there was nothing more to it than what was immediately and readily apparent on the surface. No depth, nothing interesting. The lyrics came off (to me) as trite and insincere, and the melodies sounded like plenty I had heard before. The production was also just a bit too sharp and glossy, ready-made for adult alternative radio. What a disappointment - I brought it right back to the store. Ben's better than this, and I will reference "Awake Is The New Sleep" as evidence. Better luck next time Ben, and it saddens me to have to write this review.

There's one track on this album that is going to hit you over the head with pop heaven goodness, and that is Sex Without Love; the song is an utterly catchy tune that screams out pop perfection. No other track on the album though, comes close to rivaling the catchiness of Sex Without Love. In fact, there's only one other song (American Television) that even attempts to embrace the same unrestrained catchy pop structure as Sex Without Love.

The 10 other tracks can be classified as either mellow pop (Birds and Bees, Blush, Numb, Hungry, and Ripe), or a blend of catchy and mellow pop (Love Me Like The World Was Ending, Is This How Love's Supposed To Feel?, What Would Jay-Z Do?, Home, and Just Say Yes).

The catchy mellow fusion works really well on Is This How Love's Supposed To Feel?, Hungry, and Just Say Yes; the songs start off mellow, with strong lyrics that carry the song to the chorus where the songs then become catchy. If it wasn't for Sex Without Love, it would be these 3 tracks that I would be listening to over and over again.

As for the mellow songs, Blush and Hungry are the standouts; they are quiet songs with nice lyrics about love.

All in all, this is a good album; out of 12 tracks, there are 4 (Sex Without Love, Is This How Love's Supposed To Feel?, Hungry, and Just Say Yes) that the only sensible response upon hearing them is to play them again, and 5 others (Love Me Like The World Was Ending, American Television, Blush, Hungry, and Ripe) that while they may not inspire you to replay them, they will not strike you with the urge to skip over them either.

The store where I work has a piped-in station with its own corporate approved playlist. Surprisingly, most of the music they play isn't that bad. Sure, there's the occasional Jordin Sparks or Fergie song, but we get a lot of Spoon, Gemma Hayes, and other decent artists too. Then they started playing this song, "Birds and Bees." The first time it played most of us kind of laughed it off. Then it kept showing up, daily. At one point, one of my fellow associates asked me to please kill her if they ever started to play "that god-awful song" again. I had to know what kind of person could write this unabashedly cheesy song without realizing how bad it was. Imagine my surprise when I found out it was Mr. Ben "Still Living in 1996" Lee. I also noticed that two other songs from this album are in rotation on the playlist. "Love Me Like the World is Ending" and "Is This How Love's Supposed to Feel" are both shallow, middle of the road AOR friendly songs. In fact, we had mused on who wrote those songs as well, and the consensus was that it had to have been some one-hit wonder from the '90's. We were right, even though these songs are technically new. Ben Lee writes the same dorm-room pop crap that he was writing when he came onto the scene 12 years ago, and that is simply sad. Is maturity a 28-year old sounding like a 16-year old? I don't think so. Also, I'm not sure who the staff reviewer was, but using the words "Good Charlotte" and "Ben Lee" and "indie" in the same sentence should be enough to get you fired. Bottom line: Ben Lee writes songs that other people (and himself) have already written better.