It is an ineffable and joyous mystery of the musical ages that acoustic guitars and analogue synths sound so right together. Brendan Benson has surely studied his scripture on this point: his relentlessly upbeat debut LaPalco milks the strums’n’bleeps format for all it’s worth, and the result is a resonating success.

If the album had to be summarised in a word, the word would be ‘warm.’ Benson’s voice, double-tracked throughout, has a homely, unfussy quality which perfectly complements the record’s ordinary-bloke lyrics and sweet melodies. But underneath this self-effacing surface, there’s also an immense and subtle creative talent on display.

Second track ‘Metarie,’ for example, starts with a gentle, Badly Drawn Boy-like acoustic line. Wistful vocals drift in: “Met a girl, introduced myself/I asked her to go with me and no-one else.” A female voice joins him, still à la Damon Gough. And just as you think you’ve got the song pegged as an amiable, wilfully simplistic singalong, it suddenly veers sideways into another key, bringing luscious lo-fi drums and harmonies with it.

Almost every song on the album gracefully defies expectations in this manner. ‘Folk Singer’ is a rock song, ‘You’re Quiet’ is an upbeat pop tune, ‘What’ begins as atmospheric lounge jazz only to become a strident Oasis-meets-The-Whitlams stomp-along.

There’s also the odd memorable lyric, though in general Benson relies a little too heavily on the quotidian guess-what-happened-the-other-day formula. ‘Life In The D’ speaks of a sinner trapped between heaven and hell: “When God made the earth, and saw his net worth/He posed for a shot... If hell does exist, then the devil’s a scientist/Finding the cure.”

LaPalco is a very good record. The only reason it’s not excellent is that its unflagging optimism – never dropped, even for a second – tilts the overall listening experience off-balance and becomes a kind of flippancy. We need dark to see light, even if it’s just a half shadow. It is certain that a musician of Benson’s caliber has dark songs too, so he must have chosen to omit them from LaPalco, to its detriment.

I look forward to hearing them on his next album.