Changing Horses

Ben Kweller's Changing Horses joins the likes of Beck's Sea Change, Christina Aguilera's Back to Basics, and Mariah Carey's The Emancipation of Mimi on the list of albums with titles that tell you what the artist is doing with his or her career. In Kweller's case the mid-stream leap is being made from polite, mannered 1960s-influenced indie-pop to polite, mannered 1970s influenced alt-country. It's a clear shift but not a terribly shocking or risky one; in fact, it's practically a rite of passage at this point for an articulate, prodigious young indie songwriter (Conor Oberst, Jenny Lewis) to eventually confuse an acceptance of artistic adulthood with a need to embrace maturity through old Hag records and lots of pedal steel guitar.