Ben Arthur's been bouncing around the East Coast for a while, but Edible Darling (Bardic) is his first real opportunity to shake hands and nod heads across America. He joins guys like Josh Kelley and Jason Mraz as comers to the affable white guy adult alternative craps game, occurring right now in the alley behind your local microbrewery. It's the faded, frayed khakis and longish hair you'll find there informing Arthur's easygoing sound here. He's a bit older, so there's quite a bit of Wallflowers in his sound (check "Broken-Hearted Smile"), but cuts like "End of the Day" and first single "Mary Ann" are juiced with the mild electronic sheen typical of up-to-the-second Hot AC radio play lists. Despite the obviousness of the processed backing vocals and subtle drum programming, it's Arthur's charisma that needs to sell this stuff, and he proves to be quite engaging. His slightly nasal delivery can shift effortlessly into an upper register ("Mercy"), and he's appropriately contemplative on dusky, hungover folk-pop numbers like "Tonight" or "Bloomed"; the gorgeous pacing of the latter even points to his well-honed songwriting chops. Nothing flashy is the m.o. here, but it's compelling, nicely put-together stuff that sets up a corner booth in the middle of the road. Arthur's lyricism isn't as developed as some of his peers (Rhett Miller comes to mind), but he sketches the passing images well. "Laying on cold tile," "like the voices downstairs from back home," "naked and black and blue," even the "edible darling" on the front cover -- Arthur's colors and characters inhabit his Darling in broad but vivid strokes. The pacing works well here, too, with "Mary Ann"'s slicker production abutting the quiet acoustics of "Tonight," or a set-break instrumental setting up the fun country-rock bramble of "Keep Me Around," where the black humor of Warren Zevon winks in the margins. Overall it's a pretty accomplished set, and one that deserves the same amount of play the rest of that five o'clock shadow white guy posse is getting.
© Johnny Loftus /TiVo