Brendan Benson and Cory Chisel @ Turner Hall Ballroom

After touring together for more than amonth, the Brendan Benson/Cory Chisel road show has become a finely tunedmachine, so it's a damn shame that more people know of Benson as "that guyfrom The Raconteurs" than "a power-pop genius who has a handful ofindependently brilliant records under his belt." The gap between his firstsolo release and his initial appearance alongside Jack White & Co. spannedalmost exactly a decade, but to the delight of longtime fans this latternotoriety resulted in a comfortably crowded Turner Hall Ballroom for Benson'sshow on Wednesday night.

The audience seemed especiallyresponsive toward honorary-Milwaukeean-by-way-of-Appleton Cory Chiseleven hisobligatory Brett Favre/Vikings jokes garnered some chuckles, which is saying alot in Our Year of Favre Fatigue. Ably supported by his five-piece WanderingSons, Chisel responded to his affectionate reception with an outright inspiringset.Taut melodies and gorgeous backingvocals propelled an arrangement of stomp-along pop-rock interspersed with a fewself-described "lullabies," each of which conjured more than a touchof The Swell Season's love-haunted ache.

Covers aside, Benson's set was splitalmost evenly among all four of his albums, with 2002's Lapalco and this summer's MyOld, Familiar Friend taking the lead by one song apiece. His occasionallysimplistic rhymes fit like perfect little puzzle pieces across his backingband's phenomenal harmonies and surgically precise rhythms. It's a joy toreport that his days in an instantly famous pseudo-supergroup have turnedBenson into a bona fide showman. "Good to Me" received the unbridledrock-star treatment, its recitation of life's simplest pleasures driven to newheights by full-on guitar and keyboard wizardry. The opening song and leadsingle from My Old, Familiar Friend,"A Whole Lot Better," seems destined for this year's confused andcrushed-out mix tapes, with sentiments swerving wildly between unadorned warmthand outright derision.

After Chisel and the Sons'foot-stomping, altogether moving performance, most of the crowd seemed tosimultaneously take an odd stage direction: Look bored out of your skulls untilsomeone plays a Tom Petty song. Luckily, the headliner played a pair: Bensonpounced on a rousing version of "Listen to Her Heart," and thetwo-song encore closed out the evening with an effervescent version of"American Girl," strummed alongside an openly excited Chisel.Suddenly, the otherwise-stolid crowd was alive with tone-deaf singing andpumped fists, ending the show as it should've lasted all night long:enthusiastically, loudly and to great applause.

Photos by Cj Foeckler