Stodgy Bread & Crumby Butter. Brendan Benson, What Kind of World.

If Jack White "of The White Stripes" may have constituted the 25% of The Raconteurs that commanded approximately nigh on 90% of any initial appeal then lone ranger Brendan Benson will indubitably have upped his share since throwing his cards (or at least homely nasal vocals) down into the mix. He's debatably become "Brendan Benson of The Raconteurs" to the more ignorant or undiscerning among us and although the dust around White's debut solo outing proper may still be mid-settle, What Kind of World could – even if it may not – sweep away some of the ubiquitous exaggerations his counterpart's been accredited with. For if devoid of the blundering, gut-busting riffage and the arguably misogynistic lyricisms of his freshly divorced fellow Raconteur's latest, it's a breezy affair bristling with a gutsy nostalgia for them glorified '90s. Indeed such is the ballsy romp of Happy Most of the Time it's all too easy to envisage Benson swaggering about disemboweled ballroom with an inanimate broomstick.

Of course he and his figurative dance partner aren't exactly taking elegant strides toward anything particularly forward-thinking nor pioneering. Guitars sprinkled with a slight distortion and Hammond organs set to whir are the stodgy bread and crumby butter of What Kind of World and intermittently it's a quite inedible combination; a regurgitation of next to nothing good: Here in the Deadlights sounds like a sluggish My Generation before soon degenerating into cocksure guff bundled along with pallid White-inspired prose of ash, soot and deadwood; Bad for Me like John Grant castoff bereft of the wry passive aggression that rendered Queen of Denmark such an essential listen; Met Your Match like school disco soundtrackers tinkering with newly acquired, if scarcely accomplished synth presets.

However when he goes for broke and breaks new raucous into the aforementioned decade – as on the slither 'n' stomp of Light of Day or the Ashley Monroe-featuring orchestral boy/girl swoon of Pretty Baby – there's stuff worth plucking out from the retrospective rubble swept up into the corner.

In his  promo sleeve notes he pleas to be able 'to present What Kind of World to the world, without leaks, as it was intended' and although a perhaps somewhat unfair extended parallel, were one to bash Blunderbuss into Google the search is rather more likely to secrete the very word he fears. For this one may well just be brushed under the carpet before Benson has even decided on which side of things to fall on the aimless country roll of closer On the Fence...