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Marco Benevento

marco benevento

I’d never put my music so completely in someone else’s hands before,” says Marco Benevento. “I’d been hesitant to work with outside producers in the past, but the experience of making this record ended up being so freeing and exciting. I loved every single minute of it.”

It’s impossible not to hear that freedom and excitement and joy coursing through the veins of ‘Let It Slide,’ Benevento’s first new studio album in three years. Produced by Leon Michels (The Arcs, Lee Fields), the record introduces a gritty, soulful edge to Benvento’s brand of high-octane keyboard wizardry, an uptempo, uplifting sound he playfully describes as “hot dance piano rock.” For all Benevento’s virtuosity on the keys, though, the songs here are driven primarily by intoxicating grooves, with spare drums and minimalist bass lines underpinning infectious, intentionally lo-fi vocal hooks. The resulting vibe is a timeless one, filtering elements of vintage R&B and soul through modern indie rock and pop sensibilities and peppering it with the kind of adventurous improvisation that Benevento’s come to be celebrated for worldwide.

“This record has a really nice mix of what Leon does at his Diamond Mine studio and what I do at my Fred Short studio,” explains Benevento. “The final call on everything was always Leon’s, though, because I trusted him completely. If he had ideas about structures or arrangements, I just said yes without any hesitation.”

That might sound like a risky move for an artist used to total control, but Benevento’s built an entire career out of musical fearlessness. Dubbed “one of the most talented keys players of our time” by CBS Radio, Benevento’s released six critically acclaimed solo albums over the last decade, performed everywhere from Carnegie Hall and Newport Jazz to Lollapalooza and Bonnaroo, and worked in the studio and on the road with the likes of Richard Swift (The Shins, The Arcs), Jon Brion (Spoon, Aimee Mann), A.C. Newman (The New Pornographers), and Simone Felice (The Felice Brothers, The Lumineers) among others. “It’s safe to say that no one sees the keyboard quite like Marco Benevento’s genre-blind mashup of indie rock, jazz and skewed improvisation,” the LA Times raved, while NPR said he combines “the thrust of rock, the questing of jazz and the experimental ecstasy of jam,” and Rolling Stone praised “the textures and colors available in his keyboards and arsenal of manipulated pedals and effects,” along with his “deceptively rich, catchy melodies and straight-ahead grooves.”

Benevento first met Michels while filling in for him on tour with The Arcs, a gig he landed at the suggestion of the late producer and Arcs member Richard Swift. Swift and Benevento had collaborated on an album a few years earlier, and the two formed such a deep connection that Benevento ultimately titled that collection ‘Swift’ in his honor.

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