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A Love Extreme is, as its title suggests, an album of sonic extremes, but those willing to sit through both discs will find a number of eccentric, engaging songs, particularly on side two.
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With music that evokes cheesy early-’70s MOR and the modern Hollywood-hipster songbook invented by Beck, this is pop that gets out and moves, and has you rooting for the wallflower with the yawny voice to do the same.
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With his languid, prolific philosophising, twisting humour and consistent melodic achievements, its tempting to see Benji Hughes as a kind of cartoon successor to Stephen Merrit and The Magnetic Fields (though it's more "25 Songs About Women 'N' Stuff" than "69 Love Songs"), but either way he's just snuck in from the back of the field with one of the most endearing albums of 2008.
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A Love Extreme giddily steals from and collides with a kaleidoscope of genres, all without a trace of modern guilt.
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When Hughes' drolleries and hopeless romanticism combine, the effect can be sublime.