It's not easy being Brendan Benson. A passionate, perennial outsider, he has been lumped in as part of the Detroit music scene's mafia by location and association. His heady mix of Beach Boys harmonies, swollen McCartney melodies and sinewy Stooges rhythms, sublimely realised on his latest album Lapalco, could not be further from the stripped down garage-blues of his neighbours and best mates, the White Stripes.

Nor could his awkward affability. "We're speeding through this because I'm fucking nervous," he laughs, his eyebrows knitted in consternation. But just as his introspective lyrics and hesitant rhythms lie beneath the sunniest of sounds, Benson's unease lurks below the most polished professionalism.

Armed with an acoustic guitar and accompanied by Chris Plum, his foil and reassuring friend, he sings about insects with the same tenderness as he does about girls. Pleasure Seeker, given a bare treatment, loses none of its warm banality or bathos, and Benson yearns so hard a vein in his neck looks set to burst. But the warmth and subtle cleverness - think Ben Folds Five meeting Ben Kweller to discuss the British Invasion - soon turns to soft rock.

As the heavy bass of Folk Singer grinds against the growing drum momentum, Benson's voice is tainted by echo, his retro-pop vision bristling under the weight of his affection for Whitesnake. Eventually is similarly poodle-permed and stadium-bound. Plum's spacey keyboard bleeps and whirls during Tiny Spark are at odds with the churning guitar melodies, and it is up to Benson's smooth, chatty voice to fuse the classic and contemporary.

The shadow of Jack White looms large. Benson's Good to Me is part of the White Stripes' repertoire, giving him his first crowd-pleaser by default. Giving in to catcalls for Fell in Love With a Girl, he mimics White's constricted vocals before abandoning the song wearily, declaring a love for Jeff Lynne and taking refuge in a smoothed-out version of Wings' Let Me Roll It.