Charlotte Rose Benjamin – “Slot Machine”

SXSW 2023 – OEB Score 8, Popularity Index 3

Pairs well with…Alex Lahey, Mazzy Star, Jenny Lewis

Charlotte Rose Benjamin released her first full album this year Dreamtina, on which she continues to develop her appealing mix of alt-country, indie pop, and bedroom rock. The standout track is “Slot Machine,” both tender and cutting about an unrequited love and with a nice earworm melody. Other songs that should translate well for the stage include “Louis, “Friend,” and “satisfied” in which she allow the band to come forward at points to match her plaintive speak-singing. Not every song on the new album is a hit; a few don’t rise above laments, but most of the album has enough lo-fi indie rock and dream pop fuzz to climb the songs out of the bedroom and ready for a restless Southby audience to appreciate, even if the topic remains failed (or never started) relationships. The best of Benjamin’s lyrics have the cleverness and snark to make you appreciate her songwriting talents (“I like martinis dirty and tequila dry/I’ve been unsatisfied since junior high”). Here frequent use of self-deprecating humor also serves her, at one point, she confesses, “I’ve got some problems but they’re so cliché.”  

Dreamtina nicely captures Gen Z’s collective anxiety (and tendency to overshare), but with intelligence, humor, and ultimately, compassion. Although Benjamin now lives in New York, she claims her introspection and attention to detail likely comes from her childhood growing up on Martha’s Vineyard.  While she says she had “a wonderful childhood . . . living on an island can be incredibly isolating.” She also notes that while the Vineyard is known for its expensive summer homes, the people who live there year-round are not necessarily from the privileged class. Thus, she “always identified more with the towny girls from the movie Mystic Pizza.” (David Zlotnick)