Benmont Tench doesn’t identify his pianos as such, however he lovingly distinguishes every of the keyboards he performs on his newest album. “Mr Tench’s piano” is a Steinway B. So is “the Village Recorder’s piano” used within the eponymous studio. “Mr Wilson’s piano”, belonging to producer Jonathan Wilson, is a 1913 Steinway A3. You get to know all these keyboard characters and extra on The Melancholy Season, the beautiful, heart-warming second solo album by a musician higher referred to as a sought-after Los Angeles session participant and lifelong member of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers.
Benjamin Montmorency Tench III’s creative alliance with Petty stretches again to the early ’70s of their native Florida. He was a founding member of the Heartbreakers, collaborating joyfully throughout the many years till Petty’s premature dying in 2017 put a full cease on the band simply as that they had rounded off their 40th-anniversary tour. Because the early ’80s, he has additionally utilized “the Tench contact” to numerous information and periods, beginning with Stevie Nicks’ solo debut Bella Donna and Dylan’s Shot Of Love. He performed alongside Petty on Roy Orbison’s Thriller Lady and has executed refined work for Alanis Morissette, Jackson Browne, Aretha Franklin, Elvis Costello and, most lately, Ringo Starr and The Rolling Stones.
Tench isn’t any flashy showman, sliding in like a part of the furnishings on Hackney Diamonds’ “Dreamy Skies”, brooding superbly on Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me” and delivering an emotional intestine punch on Johnny Money’s model of “Damage”. He takes the identical intuitive strategy to his personal music. “If a track reveals up, you’ve gotta write it,” he informed The Hollywood Reporter in 2014. Feargal Sharkey and Roseanne Money have benefitted from his largesse, scoring hits with “You Little Thief” and Petty co-write “By no means Be You”, respectively.
The songs that make up on The Melancholy Season have been percolating for a while, with births (his first little one), deaths (Petty) and marriage (to author Alice Carbone) all delaying recording. Tench favours a restricted palette, citing Dylan’s John Wesley Harding and Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band, each uncluttered benchmarks utilizing a small solid of gamers. Tench’s crew right here consists of Jonathan Wilson, additionally on drums, bassist Sebastian Steinberg and stylish cameos from Dawes’ Taylor Goldsmith, singer-songwriter Jenny O and Nickel Creek’s Sarah Watkins.
The opening title observe is a gem of poetic parsimony, conjuring a world of turning seasons and moods from a couple of well-chosen phrases, layered with simpatico textures. First, the sleek stroking of piano, lithe and easy, then light bassline, metronomic beat and the nice and cozy bathtub of organ, retaining it easy but in some way luxurious. It’s an arresting begin, the work of a person alive to and respectful of his surroundings. “Pledge” is pacier and extra voluble, a peppy meditation on the mysteries of time and nature with a contact of fabulism and Biblical allusions. It builds to a clamorous prayer for social justice, searching for some earthly redemption, and indicators off with a well-aimed lyrical dart: “Jesus ain’t the one one which wept.”
Tench steers his crew by the rollicking rock’n’roll of “Rattle”, an impish cavalcade of freewheeling philosophy and juke joint spirit, earlier than allotting with their providers on naked bones ballad “If She Knew”. There’s a husky sweetness to Tench’s tone, channelling a number of the gruff melodrama of Lee Hazlewood right here and the beer-goggled evening imaginative and prescient of Tom Waits on mischievous lounge bar vignette “Wobbles”, which beforehand featured as an instrumental on his 2014 debut You Ought to Be So Fortunate.
“Again” is scrumptious brooding R&B, with aqueous bassline, stealthy sustained notes on Hammond and acid inflections from Wilson on guitar. Tench appears like a complete cat however not so cool that he gained’t beg for the return of his lady. He lets the vulnerability in his voice leak out on outlaw nation amble “Like Crystal”. Accompanied by a loping bassline, like a trusty outdated steed, he sizes up the return of an outdated adversarial love. Even higher, “Dallas” reels you in from the primary line as Tench performs the mildly repentant drifter, elevating a wizened toast to all the parents he’s vexed earlier than.
Tench jokes that he sings like Chet Baker if Baker couldn’t sing. His second instrument has taken a battering within the decade since his debut, however he has emerged from mouth most cancers surgical procedure in 2023 with a rebuilt jaw, refreshed goal and an album of songs encompassing beguiling naivety, terse knowledge and twinkling remorse.
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