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...