When you've been as deep in the scene for as long as Ben Davis has, you end up with some pretty bonkers stories. Road stories, recording stories, stories of things that have happened to you, your friends, and friends of your friends. Tales of addicts, cheats and liars with hearts of gold that are also doing their best to create, love and survive--yarns spun out of broken guitar strings, epic mishaps that must be retold in such a way that the actual persons involved are not mentioned by name, exactly. But, when the tale is told—when one of Ben Davis' jams gets jammed—those involved know exactly who they are, or the listener know friends of friends who fit the archetype, who have lived the same tale-worthy days, weeks, months, years.

"Charge It Up!", Ben Davis' third solo full-length (and the fourteenth album on which his solo work has appeared) is packed to the gills with the kind of frenetic, danceable, shoutable, undeniably beyond catchy hard pop that has flowed like a river of hot lava through his entire catalog. It is a tremendous, itch-scratching record that makes you jones to see Ben Davis & his Jetts. live, asap. You know what it would be like in your head; you know the moves you would bust, you know the empty PBR can you would throw, out of pure joy, into the rest of the writhing, sweaty crowd. Everything's there: Davis' crunchy, fuzzed-out, sun-bright riffage, the unstoppable percussive energy, the soaring rock melodies that are so sick they should be in a hospital.

After his collaboration with Des Ark's Aimee Argote on 2007's Battle of the Beards, Ben was done with the full orchestra. Done writing music charts for oboes. Done recording string sections. Davis had a full time touring band that had toured the US and Europe, was tight and ready to hone his songs into more direct attack. MileMarker and Auxes mastermind Dave Laney created a recording studio out of drummer John Bowman's art studio. They waited for the trains and concrete trucks to pause at the industrial yard next door and hit record.

Looking beyond the rad musicality, there are the stories. In case you didn't know, Ben Davis has been making music for over a decade. His first album was post-hardcore legacy band Sleepytime Trio's 1997 release "Plus 6000" (one more release was to follow in 1998). Following that band's demise, Davis jammed out caustic, driving angular future punk with seminal Jade Tree band Milemarker (five albums total between 1997 and 2005) before making a poppier departure playing in Bats and Mice (four albums between 2000 and 2009), whose critically-acclaimed albums prove that Davis has, aside from devastating chops, crazy hooks. In 2001, Davis released his first solo effort on Lovitt Records, "Hushed Patterns of Relief". He has also composed works for one film (2003 indie film "Growing Up") and two plays ("Dar He" by Mike Wiley in 2006 and "Hidden Voices" by Lynden Harris in 2007). Davis has played approximately 658,926,372 shows highlighted by tours of Japan, Europe, and headlining at the Kennedy Center. His latest crop of super stars, The Jetts are a tight knit bunch and with touring comes a party of countless misadventures; partners in innumerable crimes of the hijinks variety. "Charge It Up!" addresses, in Davis' words, "the challenge of continuing the challenge of creating music and art despite the pressures of ailing economies, conforming to society after a certain age, and expectations of what success should be. We are fortunate enough to be a part of a worldwide community of artists who live and breathe and lifetime commitment to creativity. Perseverance and struggle are themes. These are short songs about burned bridges, sexual dissent, not giving up, and, of course, dancing your ass off."

In short, he could sit down and tell you about the time he harpooned that rabid elephant that broke free from the Bronx Zoo and was caught destroying the green room at the Bowery; he could recount that one show at Max's Kansas City where the entire club was lifted straight off of its foundation by a tornado that seemed to actually have a face. He could tell you about how he got so stressed and dehydrated during the recording process of "Charge It Up!" that he developed a kidney infection that resulted in MRIs and having a penile scope with a mini camera shoved up his urethra to check for any major problems, and how the camera discovered a sign that read "Too much beer and coffee will fuck you up, boy." (Ben is still paying the bill off for those urinary invasions.) He can tell you all of this passively, but he'd rather do the telling standing up. Rocking. In a serious way, and with a fervor and energetic vehemence that has only increased with his every release, his every show, his every accumulated tale. Feel it.