Sha Sha

Japanese Version featuring a Bonus Track

In 1997, with dreamy Ozzie kiddos Silverchair at their commercial zenith and record labels seeing dollar signs, an unassuming pop-rock trio from Texas led by teenage singer-songwriter Ben Kweller sparked a bidding war. As the dust settled, Kweller's band Radish signed with Mercury and released Restraining Bolt; the stately New Yorker magazine weighed in with a profile; and the world had promptly rolled over and fell back to sleep. Sha Sha, Kweller's 2002 solo debut on Dave Matthews's ATO imprint, captures an understandably cynical but not entirely sour 20-year-old. While Sha Sha can be broadly described as melodic, somewhat rickety, frequently acoustic, piano-laced pop--think Ben Folds with less irony--there are some twisted shadings. "Walk on Me," with its propulsive beats and cascading piano line, is a whiny and wide-eyed plea for mercy to a nasty lover; "Wasted & Ready" is built on a series of preposterous rhyming couplets ("Sex reminds her of eating spaghetti / I am wasted but I'm ready") while "Harriet's Got a Song" sticks to a hard-soft formula, alternating between white-hot guitar licks and little tinkling bits. None of the tracks on Sha Sha screams megahit, but Kweller acquits himself as a unique songwriter nonetheless. --Kim Hughes