Craig Bennett

Craig Bennett moves with equal command through film direction, painting, and music, where he has become a leading practitioner of Americanized Brit-pop. As a singer and songwriter whose work draws frequent parallels to Nick Cave and David Bowie, he still surprises listeners by revealing his origins in Athens, Georgia, the city where he was born and raised. His sound—built on coolly stacked layers of pop and an unflinching vocal delivery—bears almost no resemblance to the city’s many revivalist bands, leaving him with scant company inside indie rock. On his first album, the 1999 release More City Sadness, Bennett recruited percussionist Diana Hoskins and bassist Daniel DiNardo, both former colleagues from his earlier group Cork, and thereby secured a distinct place for himself within the local scene. The next record, Happy Hollowdays, appeared in 2000 and earned favorable notices; its detailed arrangements and sophisticated lyrics signaled the emergence of a firmly confident artist. With 2002’s Sweet and Twisted, Bennett again demonstrated his sharp sense of humor and assured production touch.