Last Updated on August 22, 2023, 11:44 PM | Published: August 22, 2023
You know that old “Scooby Doo” gag where the characters are being chased by some villain and find themselves in a long hallway full of doors, running in and out of each one with increasingly fun and unexpected results?
Benji Kay’s upcoming new album, aptly titled “Hallways,” is essentially the musical equivalent of that.
Allow me to explain.
An OKC-based songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and even video game developer, Kay has been working alongside engineer-producer extraordinaire Trent Bell and ever-ubiquitous drummer Ethan Neel to build an album that bears tribute to seemingly every single pop genre that’s inspired him without ever falling wholly into one or another.
“Our goal was to combine some of my favorite elements of classic power-pop acts,” Kay told me, “like The Beatles and David Bowie with the sounds of alternative and emo bands of the 90s and early aughts like Weezer and My Chemical Romance, also throwing in a heaping helping of CAKE, the one band whose records I have put on most consistently since I started buying my own music as a kid.”
What’s admittedly remarkable is how well they’ve succeeded.
The expectation, whenever a young artist starts expressing a desire to cross and blend genres into their indie-rock, is that it’ll have a few extra instrumental touches, vocal layers, or a dash more bubbly pop sensibility.
What Kay and company have produced with “Hallways,” however, is a legitimate offering of carefully, confidently orchestrated pop experimentalism filtered through a no-less modern indie lens.
Rather than simple emo tunes with a heap of post-production chopping and layering, you can hear the intention in the compositions, from the most sparse to the most dense.
But it feels like there’s even an intention behind the sequencing as well.
Opener “Change the Game” bursts through the door with a full-throated, multi-layered vocal chorus before settling into the first of many funky, avant-pop grooves that immediately recall the CAKE influence Kay spoke of earlier.
But above that infectious, textural funk, Kay’s actually singing to the ridiculousness of American exceptionalism, addressing directly the delusions of any modern-day Candide that believes that the only world they know surely must be the best world.
It could just as easily be a snarling punk track, but even as it builds, it remains as airy and bubbling as the clouds in which the song’s targets keep their heads.
As the next tracks tackle overwhelming internet doom-scrolling and lying about mental health, they continue building and layering and ratcheting up the tension straight through to the hope-dashing ode to shattered expectations that is early single “Ginger Ale.”
And then, for just a few minutes, the clouds all kind of part and open up to the soft minimalism of centerpiece “Tahoe,” a brief respite from the informational overload pervading the album.
If these songs are all hallways leading in different, unknown directions, then “Tahoe” is the nicely open atrium, allowing you to get your bearings and rest awhile inside of Kay’s own request for solitude and sanctuary far from the madding crowd.
And then it drops you right back into the self-loathing fray with “Worthless,” the most straightforward assault on Kay’s own self-esteem, and also (likely by no accident) one of the most catchy and energetic songs in the bunch.
The album’s continuous twists and turns from soft, swelling strings to abrupt crashes and funk-rock grooves to decidedly Beatles-esque piano breaks and so forth all keep you on your toes and keep the sheer fun factor high, but they also reinforce what feels like the natural theme running throughout “Hallways”:
No matter how straight and obvious the path before you seems, you never know what you’ll find until you start moving.
If you’re looking for an astute and mature rumination on the unpredictability of life and the complexities of unregulated thought and emotion, you’ll probably find something that speaks to you here.
But if you’re looking for a wild musical ride through shape-shifting, style-hopping pop-rock that morphs and melds genres mid-song, then you’ll be guaranteed to find it.
“Hallways” by Benji Kay drops on streaming services everywhere on Friday, September 1st.
Follow Benji Kay online at @okaybenji on Instagram and on Soundcloud at soundcloud.com/okaybenji, where you can check out the first three singles from “Hallways” right now.
Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
