Brendan Benson, purveyor of stunning bittersweet pop, deserves to be more famous than he is. Anna Carey talks to the cult musician about collaborating with neighbour Jack White, living and working in ravaged Detroit, and the differences between US and European audiences

If there was any fairness in the music business, Detroit-based Brendan Benson would be fabulously rich and incredibly famous. After all, surely anyone who can produce three fantastic albums of blissful guitar pop deserves widespread adoration and success. Sadly, the music business is not fair at all, and Benson remains a cult figure, albeit a much loved one.

Technically Benson is a singer-songwriter, but there's nothing of the po-faced Damien Rice-esque troubadour about him. Although he sometimes performs solo with an acoustic guitar, his bittersweet pop songs are written and arranged for a full band. On record, however, he usually plays everything himself.

"It's really just a matter of efficiency," he says. "It's easier for me to just do it myself because I can get the song down quickly. Otherwise I have to make a demo and play it to people and they have to learn it and understand it. So it's quicker to just do it myself. It's not an ego thing or anything!"

In fact, Benson is happy to work with others; recently he's been working on an album with his old friend (and fellow Detroiter) Jack White of The White Stripes, an arrangement which was a novelty to the solo writer.

"I hadn't really collaborated much until then," he says. "I'd worked with people like Jason Faulkner, and I'd written with a couple of people, but it was never a real collaboration; it was more like helping each other out. But with Jack it was really a joint effort - we made things up from scratch together. It can be hard going with some people, but it works out really well with Jack. We have a real respect for each other, which fuelled the whole thing."

Benson found that having a musical partner made it easier to sustain enthusiasm for a project. "One of us was always amped about what we were doing, so our spirits were kept high," he says.

The fact that Benson and White are neighbours helped the songwriting and recording process. "Jack lives, like, a block away from my house. So we recorded the basic tracks live with the rhythm section of [ Cincinnati band] The Greenhornes, and after that we'd just work on it whenever we were both free - Jack would rush over to my house and we'd brainstorm."

The album will be released under an as-yet- undecided band name ("we're thinking of The Raconteurs, but apparently there's an Australian band") at some stage over the next year, when both Benson and White have more free time. "I'm doing my record now and then he's doing his, so it'll have to wait." In the meantime, Benson is branching out into other areas: producing an album for the aforementioned Greenhornes and lending his recording skills to other friends. But he insists he's not a real producer.

"I've got the studio at home, so friends just call over and we have fun and record," he says. "I don't think I really produce - I just sit there and get drunk and say hey, why don't you try this? I don't think proper producing would be very fulfilling to me, really." What he would like to do is write music for movies. "I've got a friend who's written a few movie scores, and he says it's a nightmare, but I still think it sounds really interesting and fun. And I'd love to be a musical supervisor, just putting together a soundtrack of different music. It'd be like making a mix tape - choosing the perfect song for every scene."

Benson is a big fan of films with perfect soundtracks. "I love when you go to a movie and the music is all spot on, like the Wes Anderson films. Scorsese is really good at it as well."

Soundtracks will have to wait, however, as Benson is busy for the next few months promoting his excellent new album, The Alternative to Love, which is a more melancholy, less immediate record than 2002's magnificent Lapalco and 1996's One Mississippi. Benson says that the change in tone wasn't conscious, but he thinks it could have had something to do with a speedy recording process. "Alternative to Love was made in a relatively short period of time - written and recorded in less than six months - and the other two albums were made over several years," he says. "So I think this record might have captured a specific time in my life, and that's why the mood is kind of different."

It may be less bouncy than its predecessors, but The Alternative to Love is still indisputably a guitar pop album. Benson, however, didn't grow up listening to power pop. "I've always listened to classic rock - Bowie, T Rex, the Stones, The Kinks. So I'm not sure why I write the kind of music I do! It's weird, the stuff I like doesn't seem to make its way into my music - or if it does, it's not very obvious. David Bowie is my all-time-favourite artist, but I'm pretty sure I don't sound like him."

Nor does he sound much like most of the garage bands who, over the last couple of years, put Detroit in the music media spotlight. But he still thinks Detroit is a great place to be a rock musician.

"There really is a community of musicians there, and it's always been the same. I think the media attention screwed it up for a little while, because the community feeling was kind of thrown out the window, but now it's back. The media aren't so hysterical about Detroit anymore."

Benson is fond of his adopted home town, which has been plagued by riots and unemployment over nearly 40 years.

"I wouldn't actually recommend anyone go and live there," he laughs. "But it's great for artists and musicians because it's really inexpensive. You can afford a big space, you don't have to work too much to pay the rent. So you've got the space and the time to spend on your art. Chances are you don't have any neighbours, because the house next door has been torn down, so you can play music all day long. And to be honest, there's nothing else to do there but play music or paint or whatever."

Although he feels at home in Detroit, Benson's music has perhaps met with more acclaim in Europe than in his native land. And the feeling seems to be mutual - he particularly enjoys touring on this side of the Atlantic.

"The audiences in Europe will usually applaud based on how much they liked your song, whereas the audience in the States will applaud the same way after every song," he says. "I like it here because you can tell what songs are going over well - you can really tell if the audience are into it. It's a dependable barometer!"

If so, Benson should be feeling pretty good about the new album - the audience at his tiny Dublin show in Doyle's on College Green are very enthusiastic about every song, including the ones most of them have never heard before. In fact, they're such a well behaved audience that Benson started feeling a little nervous.

"Yeah, no one said anything at all between the songs," he says. "It was kind of intimidating!"

So would he prefer a chattier crowd? "I don't mind people talking a little bit during the shows," he laughs. "Just as long as they're enjoying the music."

The Alternative to Love is on V2